


Tír na nÓg

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ben gets abducted by fairies, Dean heads out to get himself taken as well, hoping that he can locate Ben and bring him back. He quickly discovers he's in way over his head as the sidhe throw him in the dungeons. Meanwhile, back in the human world, Bobby has his hands full trying to keep the fairies from destroying the town, and a soulless Sam from blocking Dean and the Braedens' route home. . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tír na nÓg

**Author's Note:**

> References to deaths of children, general spoilers for season six. Takes place after 6x09, “Clap Your Hands If You Believe”. Written for the spn_j2_bigbang challenge on LiveJournal.

  
**Chapter One: The Dungeon Master**   


Dean scraped his bare feet across the floor, scattering scraps of hay and what he really hoped weren't dried rat droppings. The chains around his ankles clanked faintly, the ones at his wrists chiming in as he tried to push himself into a more comfortable position against the wall.

This wasn't going like he'd planned.

He'd lost track of the time he'd spent in the cell, but he was certain it was at least a matter of days. There were no windows, the only available light coming from a flickering torch somewhere along the wall outside the cell. A guard appeared on occasion, covered head to toe by a heavy cloak, to bring him a bowl of murky water and a lump of dark, stale bread, left by the bars at the edge of where Dean could reach with his toes. He wasn't sure if they were taunting him or if they really expected him to be able to eat and drink with his feet like a monkey. He wouldn't put either possibility past the bastards. The same guard would then return a few hours or so later, unchain Dean from the wall long enough for a short trip to what Dean generously called the "bathroom", then chain him back up before Dean had even gotten all the feeling back in his limbs. He'd tried to fight the first time, but had been overpowered so easily it was absurd.

He settled again, giving up on relieving the ache of his shoulders and his ass. His hands were trapped just above his head, held in place by thick shackles at the ends of the chains. If he stretched, he could just barely scratch his ear with the edge of his thumb. He couldn't help but wonder why they'd gone through all the trouble of re-abducting him if they were just going to leave him to starve in a dungeon.

Assuming, of course, that he didn't die of boredom first. At least Hell had been interesting.

He zoned out for awhile, staring ahead into the darkness and letting his mind blank out without really sleeping. He didn't trust his captors not to mess with him once he'd closed his eyes. This sort of meditative stillness was a skill hard won from hours of riding in the car as a child, tuning out the whine of his younger brother and letting the road sweep past beneath him. He'd almost lost it in the years after Dad had given him the Impala, hadn't rediscovered it until that endless road trip to Nebraska after the rawhead, when he'd needed to separate himself from the pain of his failing heart. It had scared the crap out of Lisa when he'd used it after Sam jumped into the Pit. She'd thought he was shutting down.

He was probably scaring the crap out of her all over again. If he'd been here for days, then who knew how long it'd been in the real world, how long she'd been waiting for him to come back with Ben in tow. He hoped Ben wasn't down here somewhere with him. He hadn't heard any sounds of other prisoners, but for all he knew, the cells in this dungeon were magically soundproofed.

"Ugh." The voice, rough and vaguely feminine, burst through his haze with all the grace of a charging bull moose. "How medieval."

Dean squinted into the darkness, just managing to make out a crouching figure at the far corner of the cell. The figure shifted with a rustle of something more than hay. "Ooo," it said, tone thick with disdain. "We're the sidhe. We're so pretty, we don't need to advance as a culture."

Dean slid his feet closer to his body. The figure startled, folding in on itself with a sharp, hissing exhalation of breath.

"FFFT!"

Dean froze. The figure held still for a moment, then slowly uncurled, creeping forward.

"Sorry," it said. "Didn't know you were awake."

When Dean didn't move, the figure came forward again with a skittering sound, like claws scraping across the stone floor. It moved quickly, resolving out of the shadows into a silhouette of a small, thin girl with wild, thickly spiked hair running from low on her forehead to the curve of her lower back. She sniffed the air in front of him, still crouched low, then reached one arm out to the side, pointing at his bread.

"You gonna eat that?"

Dean stared.

"No?" the girl tilted toward her outstretched hand, opening her fingers. When he didn't answer, she shrugged and snatched up the lump, sending the spikes of her hair undulating. She didn't eat the bread, just tucked it away somewhere into what Dean had to assume was a pocket, though it was hard to tell what she wore in the darkness. "What they got you down here for, then? You kick the wrong courtier? Spit in the soup?"

Dean tried to speak, then cleared his throat when all he managed was a dry croak. "Who are you?"

The girl threw her hands into the air. "It lives!" She scurried closer, and Dean saw her nose twitch as she scented the air around him again. "Let's see. Not sidhe, you don't smell all fancy. Not a sprite though, not with those manacles. That'd make you human, then, yeah? One of the few, the happy few, the band of buggered boys for Oberon."

Dean sighed. "Yeah. I know who I am. I asked about you."

"Ooo, a grouchy one." the girl settled back into her crouch, her shoulders rising, the spikes of her hair twitching up. "Grrrr." The spikes flattened out again and she sat up, tilting her head. "Call me Ishmael. Or Lola the showgirl. I'm not really particular." She stuck out her hand as if to shake. Her nails were long and narrow, faintly curved and very dark.

"You're a fairy," Dean said.

"Ffft!" she hissed. "Bite your tongue! I'm a pixie." She jerked her hand, fingers waving, waiting on that shake. Dean looked from her hand to the manacles on his wrists and rolled his eyes. "Fine then," she said and stood up, leaning forward at the waist to grab his right hand. She was no more than four and a half feet tall and, up close, Dean could see that she wore a loose top and skin tight pants made from some sort of fuzzy material, like a velour track suit. What he'd taken for her hair was actually a long line of quills, like a porcupine's only thicker. She wiggled his fingers about, then settled back into her crouch.

"There," she said. "Well met by torchlight. Thanks for the bread, Groucho." She turned to start crawling back toward the corner of the cell.

"Hey." Dean twisted in his chains, trying to get his feet under him. "Hey, you're just going to leave me here?"

She'd almost completely vanished into the shadows, but he saw her shift, pause, then turn her head.

"Uh," she said. "Yeah. What use've I got for a human?"

Dean bit his lip, sighing internally. If he could get his hands on one of her quills, at least, he could maybe get out of the cuffs. "You'd be advancing as a culture?"

She snorted, ducking her head. "You got the wrong pixie, Groucho. I'm not in the business of rescuing humans."

"Aw, come on," Dean started, but she was already gone, skittering her way through whatever crack she'd come in through, leaving Dean alone in the dark silence of the fairy dungeon.

This was _not_ going like he'd planned.

*

The phone rang.

Bobby had a lot of phones, of course, lined up on his kitchen wall, helpfully labeled things like "FBI" and "Department of Health and Human Services" and even one just labeled "Shop", which was the official salvage yard business phone and rang so rarely that Bobby checked it on a regular basis just to make sure it was still working. There was only one that had the distinction of being "the" phone, though, and it was his personal cell phone line, the number he gave out only to those closest to him. These days, he could count the number of people who called it on one hand.

And half of them were named "Winchester".

So there was no "hello?" when he answered that line. When he picked it up, eyes still glued to the text in front of him, idly thinking of the days long past when he still read stuff for fun, what came out was "what the hell have you boys gotten yourselves into now?"

The voice on the other end of the line wasn't Sam or Dean. Bobby didn't recognize it at all, in fact, and the only thing that kept him from hanging back up was the tension in the caller's voice.

"Mr. Singer?"

"That's right," Bobby told her. "Who're you?"

"Lisa," she said, and Bobby sucked in a breath. "Lisa Braeden. I'm a, uh, friend of Dean's."

"I remember," Bobby said, getting up to pace across the room. Why the hell was she calling him? Why not Dean or Sam? "What can I do for you?"

"There's --" She broke off. "It's hard to explain. Sam's here, but Dean said to call you. There's something going on. Something in my town. He said you'd help."

"I can, most likely." If Sam was there, why wasn't Dean? What the _hell_ had the boys gotten themselves into this time?

"He's gone," she continued, as though Bobby had voiced his questions out loud. "He went after Ben. My son. He said -- he said not to trust Sam with it." Her voice rose as she spoke, as though she was having trouble getting the words out. Bobby grabbed a set of keys from the hooks lining his front hall, trying to remember if Dean had mentioned where she'd relocated to, the last time. Trying to decide which car was in good enough shape to get him that far.

"Try that again," he told her. "From the beginning. I need to know what we're going after, here."

Lisa took a deep, loud breath and let it out slowly, like she was getting ready to give birth or lift a car. Bobby remembered she taught yoga and figured it was some sort of relaxation technique. "Mindfulness," they called it, or something to that effect. Bobby'd considered taking it up himself once, after he got his first Winchester-induced ulcer. He hoped it worked better for her than it had for him.

"It's the fae," she said, and Bobby cursed, pocketing his keys as he turned back toward the library. He'd picked up a few books on the subject after hearing about Sam and Dean's run in with the creatures.

"They got your boy?"

"And some other kids. Dean said he knew how to go after them, but then he just ran off. I think -- I think he knew he wasn't going to come right back."

Bobby sighed inwardly. From what Sam told him the leprechaun had said, Dean should have known the fae would want to snap him back up. Had probably counted on it, even. The damn fool was too noble for his own goddamn good.

"What's your address?" Bobby asked. "I can be on my way in an hour."

*

"You're still here."

Dean snapped his eyes open and tried to bring his hands forward, only to wince when they pulled up short, the metal of the manacles cutting into his wrists. He hissed, blinking into the gloom of the cell, his head spinning.

He'd fallen asleep -- or more likely passed out. His throat ached from lack of water and he felt shaky, like his heart was beating too fast for the rest of his body to keep up.

Lola -- he refused to call her "Ishmael" -- stood in front of him again, leaning forward to peer into his face, her hands in fists on her slim hips.

"Huh," she said. "You were sleeping that time. It's hard to tell."

Dean groaned, shifting as he tried to get feeling back in his numb ass. He coughed and swallowed before taking a shot at speaking.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing." Lola dropped down into what must have been her habitual crouch, her knees splayed, one hand braced on the floor between her feet. She started sorting something on the ground, occasionally picking bits up and sniffing them. It wasn't until she stuck out her tongue to lick tentatively at something in her hand that Dean realized it was food. His mouth watered and he found himself leaning forward. The plate next to the bowl of water held more than just a lump of bread this time. Dean spotted a pear and a wedge of cheese, and he could smell some sort of salted meat.

Hey," he grunted. "That's mine."

Lola froze, peering at Dean out of the corner of her eye, her hand outstretched to snatch up the pear.

"You didn't want it before."

"It wasn't meat before." Dean scooted forward as far as the chains would allow -- which wasn't very -- and licked his lips. He blinked. "Wait. Why are they bringing me meat, now?"

Lola shrugged, giving the pear a longing glance before withdrawing her hand. "Why do the sidhe do anything? They probably think you ate that last bit."

Dean had to wonder about creatures who wanted to reward him for eating stale bread, but the fact was he was hungry enough by now to eat pretty much anything they put in front of him.

Lola watched him expectantly. Dean cleared his throat and licked his lips again. "Well," he said. "Hand it over."

"I thought you wanted to escape."

Dean rolled his eyes. "And to do that, I'm going to need food." He reached out with his left foot, thinking he could maybe kick the pear over. How he'd get it to his mouth, he wasn't sure, but just the thought of biting into it set his stomach growling.

Lola jumped at the noise and giggled to herself. "You're too weird." She picked up the pear, rubbed it on her shirt, and looked at it just long enough that Dean started to wonder if she was going to eat it herself right in front of him. "You're sure?"

"God dammit, I'm dying here, okay?"

She stared at him for another long moment, then extended her hand, the fruit flat in her palm, the bulbous end inches from Dean's mouth. Dean wriggled a little, trying to reach for it with his hand. Lola rolled her eyes, and Dean sighed and leaned forward to take a bite.

It was awkward trying to eat from someone else's hand. Lola's nails scraped against the rough, no-longer-quite-stubble on his chin, and he forced himself not to twitch. The pear was perfectly ripe, firm but startlingly sweet, and the juice ran over the corners of his mouth, coating the bottom half of his face. He made an effort not to groan. After so long without anything to eat or drink, the pear was absolutely _amazing_.

Lola watched him chew and swallow, holding perfectly still. Her eyes were large and dark, pupil blending perfectly into iris, only the hints of white at the corners keeping her from looking like a demon.

"So," she said conversationally as he leaned in for another bite. "Word Underhill is the sidhe have nabbed themselves a human prince."

Dean blinked at that, chewing his second bite thoughtfully and taking his time before he swallowed. "Good for them."

"They're excited," Lola said, eyes still on his mouth as he went in for a third bite. "They haven't had a prince to play with in ages."

Dean wondered who the poor bastard was, mind filling suddenly with the image of tiny, naked, winged chicks pulling on Prince Charles' ears. Maybe it would distract them from the kids they'd taken from Lisa's town. Distract them from Ben.

"I'm here looking for a kid," he said, leaning back against the wall. Though he longed to snatch the rest of the pear from Lola's hand and stuff it into his mouth, seeds and stem and all, he knew better than to eat too much too quickly. The bites he'd had were already starting to settle heavily in his stomach. "Little taller than you, maybe," he continued, "dark brown hair, on his way to being ruggedly handsome."

Lola tilted her head, still holding the pear out for Dean. "Is he your son?"

Dean glanced away. "Not technically."

Lola dropped her chin, leaning in to meet his eyes. "But you lay claim to him."

Dean shrugged. "I care about him." He thought about what he'd said to Sam when they were looking after the shifter baby, about how he had started to think of Ben as his own. He remembered how it had felt when Lisa had called to say he'd gone missing. His chest ached all over again, deep and hollow, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah. I do."

Lola sat back on her heels, dropping her hand and staring at the pear for a moment before flinging it to the side. Dean watched as it smacked into the bars of the cell with a wet thud and bit back another groan.

"Okay," Lola said. "I'll help you."

*

Dean sucked a breath through his teeth as the quill slipped from the manacle lock -- _again_ \-- and stabbed him in the wrist.

"Careful." Lola sat on her knees across the cell, her face pressed between the bars as she kept watch. "Those things are sharp."

"No, really?" Dean rolled his eyes and readjusted his grip, careful not to drop the thing. There was no guarantee that if he did, Lola would let him have another one. She'd already proven to be fickle, and the whole escape thing had made her skittish. Dean was certain he could get the locks open. He'd picked his way out of cuffs before with paperclips, a nail, even a car antenna; a pixie quill should be no problem, even if it was the length of his forearm, almost as thick as a pencil, and unwieldy as hell.

And sharp. It slipped again, and Dean was certain that this time, he'd drawn blood.

"Can you hurry up?" Lola shifted against the bars, her hands wrapping tight around them as though to bend them apart. "They could come back any minute."

"Would go a lot faster --" Dean grunted straining his hand against the metal to get a better angle. "-- if you tried _helping_."

"I can't open those locks." Lola pulled her head back into the cell and stared at him. "They're warded against fae folk."

Dean bit his lip in concentration as he felt the first of the tumblers slip into position. "Thought you said you weren't a fairy."

"I'm not." She stuck her head back between the bars, sniffing. "I'm fae."

"So what?" Dean asked. He knew he was being an ass, but it seemed to keep Lola on an even keel and distracted from her freak out. Used to work that way on Sam, too, back when Sam still cared enough to freak out about anything. "That means you like other girls, right?"

"It means," Lola said, and Dean could hear the edge of that blowing hiss of hers under her words. "That I'm not a stinking human, like you."

"Yeah, well, I'd smell better if your girlfriends hadn't locked me up down here."

"Sidhe," Lola said.

"Okay." Another tumbler. The lock was just begging to give, now. "She-friends."

"I'm going to ignore you now," Lola declared.

"Honey," Dean said, then gave a little "whoop!" when the manacle finally popped open. "You couldn't ignore me if you tried."

One down, three to go. And then the cell door.

The other locks went faster once he had his hand free, and a few minutes later Dean stood in the dungeon hall, leaning against the barred door for support as he got his first real decent look at his rescuer. Her quills were a light cinnamon brown that matched the fine coat of fur covering her face, brushing back and out from the tip of her pointed nose. Her ears were large and round, nothing like the long, pointed Vulcan things they always mentioned in the stories, though her body was petite, whip-thin and angular otherwise. What he'd taken in the dim light of the cell to be a velour track suit was, in fact, a velour track suit, or at least track pants. They were purple and just a little bit shiny in the light of the nearby torches. On top she wore a loose cardigan, charcoal gray and fuzzy, with little flecks of silver woven into the knit.

From a distance, he might have taken her for a twelve year old girl.

"Right," he said, not bothering to hide his visual inventory, or to bristle under the one she was clearly performing on him. "Do you have any weapons?"

She grinned, one of those flash-in-the-pan, nowhere-near-the-eyes expressions people made when they didn't know what to say. Her teeth were small, white, and very, very pointy. "No."

Dean sighed, pushing himself off the door with effort. He shifted his grip on her shed quill like he was holding a sword. "Right then. Let's go try not to get killed."

*

Lisa lived in a quaint little suburb, one of those cookie-cutter housing developments that had sprouted like weeds across the whole country. Most people seemed to find them reassuring, but Bobby knew better. He'd seen things in these places that would give an old spook in a rundown farmhouse nightmares.

The development was centered around a large park and a lake, well-maintained and fairly popular, by the looks of it. The fields he passed on his way hosted at least two soccer games, despite the wintery chill in the air. He spotted a landmark sign outside one of the entrances to the park, advertising "The Mahaffie Homestead and Gardens". Looking down the tree-lined lane, he could make out an old mansion, not much larger than an average modern single family home, but sturdily built in stone and wood, with tall, classical columns on either side of the double front doors. Much older than the surrounding neighborhoods, then. Why developers always saw fit to build around or over historic properties, he'd never know. It was just asking for trouble. Not that there was much by way of non-historic land around. Every inch of this country had witnessed the sacred or the bloody, if you went back far enough. Most of it had seen both.

Lisa's place was on the other end of the development, as far from the Mahaffie Homestead as one could get without landing in the backwoods. He supposed that was Dean's influence. The boy would have been on the lookout for trouble when they moved in -- the last thing he'd've wanted was anything ugly following them home. It was a nice place, a little two-story with a well-kept strip of yard and a porch spanning the length of the front. Looked a bit like Bobby's own place, when he thought about it, or like his place had looked, before a demon decided to hijack his wife for shits and giggles. He wondered if Dean had noticed the resemblance when they got the place, or if there were just that many houses built in the same style. Probably the latter.

The Impala was parked diagonally in the driveway, as though Dean had been in too much of a rush to park her properly when they arrived. Bobby pulled his car up to the curb and climbed out, his legs stiff and aching from the long drive. One of these days, he was going to have to start flying to these things. Just as soon as he could be sure his tools of the trade wouldn't land him on some TSA watch list. The government didn't need to know that much about his activities, thank you very much.

The front door opened and Sam stepped out, his head angled down as he flipped through a book. The kid damn near ran Bobby over, he was so preoccupied with what he was reading.

"Bobby," he said, drawing up short and shutting the book with a snap. "What're you doing here?" The kid played a good game, but Bobby could hear the detached irritation in his voice, now that he knew what to listen for. He didn't know how Dean put up with it. Sam without his soul was just eerie.

"Lisa called," he said. "Sounded like you two could use a hand, what with Dean running off to play lone-wolf."

"Lisa's not here," Sam said. "And I've got this covered."

"Sure, kid." Bobby carefully kept the scowl that tried to rise up off his face. Sam had always had an ego on him, but without his soul to temper it, it was getting damn near insufferable. "She say where she went?"

"Out," Sam said. He tried to dodge around toward the Impala, but Bobby stepped back into his path.

"Yeah?" Sam was trying to avoid something, and Bobby damn well wanted to know what. "And when was this?"

"Last night."

Not long after she called him, Bobby guessed. And it was now getting on toward late afternoon. "So almost a day, then," he said. "Without checking in?" Sam looked away. "In a town bein' hit up by the fae."

Sam looked back again, keeping silent and giving Bobby a terrifyingly blank look. Bobby just about exploded.

"Dammit, you moron! I know Dean didn't run off without askin' you to keep an eye on her!"

Sam snorted. "Relax, Bobby. The fairies take first born sons, not their mothers."

"To take back home with 'em, maybe," Bobby said. "That don't mean they aren't gonna love getting to mess with one on this side of the great divide."

Sam scowled. "I was busy." He held up his book. "Dean had this crammed into the very back corner of the trunk. You wouldn't believe the number of weapons and amulets I had to sort through until I found it."

Bobby took the book from him and flipped through it. It was old, the pages yellowed and stained, the ink faded, but Bobby spent half his life with old books, and he picked out the key words and phrases at a glance.

"Summoning, banishment, protection. . . . This is fae magic."

"The one we picked up from the old clock maker in Elwood. I told you I had it covered."

"Fae magic ain't that easy, son." Bobby closed the book, looking up. Sam shrugged.

"Seemed pretty easy last time. The banishment looks universal, and we know it works."

Bobby did scowl then, slapping the book back into Sam's chest. "This isn't just about banishing, Sam. From what Lisa told me, there's seven kids missing, along with your brother and now Lisa herself. A banishment won't bring them back."

Sam blinked, and Bobby wondered if he really hadn't thought about that or if he just hadn't thought to care. "The fae wouldn't have taken Lisa," he said again. "She's not their type."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that." Bobby nodded to the house. "Let's get inside, and you can tell me everything you know about what's been happening."

*

The first guard was ridiculously easy to get past. He was maybe half Lola's height, slumped in a tiny chair around the first corner of the dungeon, his booted feet propped on an equally tiny stool, his tall, pointed red hat tipped forward over his eyes. He snored cartoonishly. Dean wondered how many of his fellows spent their time hanging out on suburban lawns, lying in wait for the families living there to fall asleep, blissful and unprotected, so they could --

What did gnomes do, anyway? Bite people's ankles?

Lola slipped by without a second glance, but Dean paused, the quill clenched in his hand, trying to decide if it was sharp enough to pierce the gnome's heart before it woke and sounded the alarm.

Lola huffed and grabbed Dean's arm, hauling him along with surprising strength. "Like you've never seen a brownie, before."

Dean blinked. He'd seen plenty of brownies. Even seen a handful of the "we don't sell cookies yet" sort. The tiny snoring dude in the chair didn't look like any brownie he'd ever seen.

"This place is bizarre," he muttered. Lola shushed him.

The second guard post couldn't have been more different if they'd tried. Well, save for the hat color, anyway.

"Shit," Dean hissed and in the back of his mind he registered that Lola had exactly the same reaction. They both ducked back behind a stone pillar, pressing their backs against it.

There were two of them, both full sized and humanoid: one man -- or man-shaped thing -- in a red wool cap and bedraggled clothes, and a woman-thing with long, stringy black hair, pale blue-tinted skin, and nails like talons. They were arguing loudly, though their words were too quick to follow, and they hadn't noticed Dean and Lola yet.

"Okay." Dean gripped the quill in both hands. He suspected he'd be sweating, if he had any water to spare. "Fairy primer?"

Lola blinked at him, and he tilted his head in the guards' general direction.

" _Fae_ ," she said. Dean shrugged.

"Whatever. What are they and how do we get past them?"

Lola frowned, ducking low and peeking out around him, her nose twitching. She straightened back against the wall and nodded. "A redcap," she said. "Mercenary. He's a thug, but he's very good at what he does."

"Which is?"

"Beat people to death with their bare hands. You know, the ones on the ends of the arms he's ripped off."

Dean winced. He hated being dismembered. "Think I've met him before. In a place kind of like this, even."

"And you survived?" Lola looked at him with something close to awe.

"Hey," said Dean. "I'm tougher than I look"

"I suppose you'd have to be."

Dean ignored that. "And the other?"

"Black Annis. A hag. Likes to eat naughty children."

"Seriously?"

"I hear they're very tender."

Dean's nose wrinkled. "I'm sorry I asked."

"Don't know what she's doing here, though. Not like Annis to hang with the sidhe."

"Maybe she's a merc, like Cappy over there."

"Maybe." Lola huffed. "Sell out."

"Right." Dean wasn't touching that one. "So what do we do?"

"You and me, armed with a quill, against two of Underhill's most vicious killers?" Lola tilted her head thoughtfully. "We die."

"Yeah, how about plan B?"

"There is no plan B!" Lola glared at him. "I could get by them on my own just fine, but you? You're huge!" She threw her arms up, fingers spread for emphasis. "Huge!" echoed back at them from the stone ceiling.

The guards had stopped arguing.

Lola squeaked, clapped her hands over her mouth, and vanished.

"Lola?" Dean kept his voice low, looking left and right. "Son of a bitch!"

A hand dropped onto his shoulder and hard, sharp nails dug deep into his flesh. Dean caught a whiff of old blood and tarnished metal, and then he was being flung to the floor. He had a moment to register staring up into the most disturbing set of chompers he'd seen this side of a hellhound -- the hag's teeth were long and wickedly sharp, specked with bright blood and scraps of old, moldering skin and sinew wedged in along the line of her black gums -- before a second set of hands grabbed him by the arms and he was airborne.

He slammed into the stone wall, knocking a nearby torch from its sconce, and slumped heavily to the ground. He struggled to gather his wits and his limbs despite the shock of the blow, but days of hunger, thirst, and immobility conspired against him, and the redcap was on him before he could move.

He remembered this: the fists like rocks and as unyielding as the wall and floor around him, the grip like a clamp lifting him up only to slam him down again and again. This time, though, there would be no sudden reprieve. He was on the redcap's turf, and Sam and his book of fairy spells were a long, long way away.

It occurred to Dean that he hadn't really thought his rescue mission through.

A shriek split the air, loud and piercing enough to vibrate everything in the narrow dungeon corridor, including Dean's skull. He was still struggling to clear his head when Black Annis' face forcefully replaced the redcap's cold, cruel stare.

"I had him first," she hissed, her voice the same pitch and scrape as her metallic nails against the stone wall. "He'll make a fine dinner."

Dean shot her a twisted grin in return. "Don't think so, bitch." Whatever other difficulties he was having getting his body's act together, he could always run his mouth. "I'm not exactly well-fed, these days."

"Too much talking." Annis' hand wrapped around his throat, her nails piercing the skin, sending blood down the back of his neck. "You should be screaming." She dragged him forward again, and he got his second glimpse of those horrendous teeth.

"Lady." It was no more than a croak, but that rarely stopped him. "Breath mint. _Please._ "

"Oh, that's nice," said Annis. "Say that again."

The only warning was a sharp, toothy hiss, before the redcap was slammed into from behind by a spiny purple ball of fury.

Lola had returned.

The redcap, surprised but unharmed, flung the pixie hard at the wall next to Dean. He flinched in sympathy, only to stare as Lola all but bounced off, her landing cushioned by a layer of tensed quills. She stayed low and pressed something cold, hard, and heavy into his hand.

Somehow she'd managed to get her hands on a pair of swords.

Dean swung hard at Black Annis' face and she fell back shrieking again, her hand wrenched from his neck fast enough to leave five shallow, bloody furrows in its wake. Dean tried not to think about where those nails had been.

The sword, not quite as long as his favorite machete, didn't have much of a reach, but while Dean didn't have much training in actual fencing, he was more than familiar with facing off against monsters with a short blade in his hand. He kept her back, smacking aside her reaching grip and landing a blow or two himself, though her clothes were dark and tattered enough that it was impossible to tell how much damage he was doing. Lola wasn't faring much better against the red cap, her shorter arms putting her at a disadvantage even as her size gave her an unmatched speed.

With a hard lunge, Dean managed to pull away from the wall at his back. He spun, swiping at the red cap's head with his sword and grabbing Lola's arm with his free hand. He pulled her along in a fast tactical retreat, down the hall in what he hoped was the direction of the exit. Annis' hands caught him in a glancing blow that shredded the back of his shirt -- and part of his back -- and Lola yelled something in a strange, sibilant language that set Annis shrieking again, apparently buying them time and distance.

Dean rounded one corner, then another, then shot up a flight of stairs and hung a right, following quickly barked directions from Lola, who thankfully seemed to have no trouble keeping up with Dean's insistent pull on her arm. They came to a door, the rounded top of which came up only to about the middle of Dean's chest, and another few strange words from Lola set it slamming open. The next thing Dean knew, they were tumbling out onto the thick, moonlit grass making up an open field, bordered on one side by glittering citadel walls and on the other by a dense line of trees that stretched nearly the length of the horizon.

Dean paused, panting hard, and took stock. He had a sword and a native guide, but was bleeding from any number of small wounds, dehydrated, starved, and aching to his bones. They were out of the dungeon -- and apparently, the castle it was part of -- chased by at least two creatures who wanted nothing more than to play in and/or drink his blood, and standing in a flat field with no visible cover for at least a hundred yards. And he still had no idea where they were keeping Ben.

Black Annis' hellish scream blasted out from the castle behind them, followed a moment later by the baying of several very large-sounding dogs. Both sounds drilled deep into Dean's brain, right to the spot where some of his darkest memories and fears lived. He staggered, no longer convinced he could hold himself upright.

"Listen to me," Lola said, suddenly in front of him, her tiny, terrifying teeth clenched together. "Go to the woods. Go straight in and don't look back. Don't stop until you've reached the tallest oak in the forest. Circle the oak three times widdershins, knock on the trunk with your sword, and when the face appears, say exactly this: 'I seek asylum with the Old Man of the Forest.'" She shook him by the arms once, her black eyes piercing through him. "You got that?"

Dean blinked at her, then swallowed hard and nodded. "What are you going to do?"

"Get them off your trail. It won't hold them for long, so you have to go fast." She smiled at him with a wink. "You'll get your boy back. I promise."

And then she vanished again, leaving Dean clutching his tiny sword in the middle of the field, alone.

*

Bobby's first thought on how to proceed was to try to track Lisa down. If Sam was right and she wasn't whisked off to the Land of Nod or wherever, then she'd be their best guide to the ins and outs of the town. Though he knew Sam and Dean didn't go in much for making friends when they hunted, Bobby never downplayed the importance of a local guide when one was available.

Trouble was, neither Bobby nor Sam knew her or the town well enough to begin to guess where she might have headed. They wasted an afternoon driving around town looking for her midsize crossover before heading back to her place to check through the house. They didn't find anything unusual for a family in the know about the supernatural world. There was a devil's trap painted under the mat at the front door and the salt lines along the windows had clearly been refreshed just the night before. Bobby found a few stashes of herbs and holy water scattered about, and from the back of the door hung a bundle of twigs and flowers that most people would mistake for a child's art project.

"Rowan," Sam said. "And ash. It's no meadowsweet, but those are some big time trees in fairy lore."

"You sayin' Lisa put this together before she went out for the night?"

Sam shook his head. "It was there when Dean and I got here. Lisa said it was Ben's."

"The kid's?" Bobby's brows rose. "What the hell was he doing making protective bundles?"

"He knew." Sam lead the way up the stairs to Ben's room, pushing open the door. The bed hadn't been touched since the kid went missing it seemed; the covers were scrunched up at the foot and the sheets were hidden under a pile of books and magazines, some of them still open, showing stylistic pen and ink illustrations of women with wings and distorted faces. Sam went over to pick some of them up. "Ben looked into everything he could get on fairies," he said. He held up a brightly colored, thin volume -- a comic book, Bobby realized -- like a librarian reading a picture book at story time. The page showed a dark-haired man lying in a pile of leaves with a winged woman. They were both naked, the leaves scattered as artfully as the lingerie in a Victoria's Secret catalog.

"The hell are parents letting their kids read, these days?" Bobby muttered. "You saying he was getting intel from a comic book?"

"Apparently he thought this one was a load of crap." Sam flipped to the front page, a full page panel showing dozens of the winged women. Stuck to the facing page was a post-it reading "FULL OF CRAP" in scratchy, pre-teen handwriting.

"Well." Bobby rubbed his beard. "Least the kid's got some sense in him."

"Might help to prepare him to 'service Lord Oberon'," Sam said, with an odd little smirk. Bobby grabbed the comic book from him and swatted it at his head. Sam's smirk only grew. "Anyway," he continued. "I'm pretty sure Dean had more of an influence on Ben than he thought."

"You think the kid went out to try to hunt these things."

"And it backfired."

"Hell." Bobby leaned down to flip over more of the books, getting a look at the titles. Most of them were mass-market things, fluff pieces put together by folklorists for fans of the fantasy genre. Still, Bobby knew as well as anyone that sometimes those folklorists knew their stuff. "Lisa saw all this, too?"

"She was here when Dean and I found it." Which meant Lisa knew that Dean's lifestyle had once again gotten her kid in trouble. Bobby wasn't entirely sure where the two of them stood relationship-wise these days, but he damn well knew that this wouldn't help things.

Sam tilted his head, doing a pretty damn decent impression of concern. "You look exhausted, Bobby. Why don't you get some sleep? I'll keep looking."

Right. No soul apparently meant no sleeping. Which meant that much more time for an unattended Sam to get himself -- or Dean -- into trouble.

"Where's that spell book of yours?" Bobby asked. "I'd like to take another gander at it before I hit the sack."

Sam's smirk returned. "You mean you'd like to get your hands on it so you can make sure I don't do any banishing while you're asleep." When Bobby winced faintly, he continued. "It's okay, Bobby. I know you and Dean don't really trust me that much right now." He started out of Ben's room, heading back down the stairs, and Bobby found himself trailing after. "I also know that you know I'm a damn good hunter like this." Sam picked up the book from where he'd left it on Lisa's dining room table and held it out. "Relax, okay? I'm not going to banish the fairies tonight. You're right, doing that might screw Dean over. He's made it back from the fairy realm before. I'm willing to give him more time to get back this time, too."

Bobby relaxed by degrees, taking the book. "It ain't anything personal, Sam," he said. "You know that."

"Yeah." Sam spread his hands, giving Bobby a small smile instead of a smirk, this time. "I'm just going to look into some of Ben's books, check out some stuff on the 'net. I won't even leave the house, I promise. We can pick it back up, tomorrow."

Bobby studied him for a long moment, trying to see if Sam was worming his way into a loophole or not. He might not have graduated, but he'd at least started studying law, and that meant he had a bit of training looking for those things.

On the other hand, Bobby had a good couple decades experience at spotting frauds and cons. He nodded.

"Alright. Tomorrow, then."

*

The field was larger than it seemed from the edge of the castle, but whatever Lola was doing to distract the pursuit was working. Dean managed to make his way across the open grass without any interruption, though by the time he reached the tree line, his burst of adrenaline-fueled energy was all but gone, and his run had turned into more of a rapid stagger. The forest was dense, more so than any of the woodsy areas he'd spent time in in the real world, and the trees all bore broad, thick leaves that reflected the moonlight, scattering it about and making navigation of the reaching roots and underbrush difficult. On the stone floors of the dungeon, it had been easy to forget the fact that the fairies had stolen his shoes; now the uneven ground seemed to stab into his soles with every step, leaving his feet feeling shredded. He was certain he was leaving a bloody trail behind in his wake, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it without stopping, and if he did that, he wasn't sure he'd be able to get going again. He tripped so many times that he might as well have been falling through the woods, turning both ankles and ending up using the short sword as an awkward cane. The blade was too dull to hack through most of the branches, and if it hadn't been the only thing he had that even remotely resembled a weapon -- the quill was long gone, hopefully getting itself stuck in the redcap's feet, or something -- he'd have dumped it in a bush the first time a branch he tried to cut had swung back to smack him in the face.

It was something of a minor miracle that he and Lola had made it out of the castle alive.

It wasn't long before Dean decided he'd managed to get himself lost. Lola had said to go straight in the forest, but with no real landmarks or even a reliable glimpse of the moon, he had no way of knowing if he was managing to do so. And "find the tallest oak in the forest?" How was he supposed to do that? He couldn't make out the tops of any of the trees, and in this light, he was pretty sure he wouldn't recognize an oak if it smacked him in the face. Her little ritual sounded ridiculous. It was the sort of thing Sam would have reveled in -- the old Sam, at least -- but Dean would much rather get instructions like "aim for the eyes" or "set it on fire".

He dug into his pocket with his free hand. No good, the fairies had taken his lighter along with everything else he'd been carrying. What they planned to do with a wallet full of fake credit cards and a thrift store cassette of Kansas' greatest hits, he had no idea. Maybe they were attracted to shiny things, like magpies or ferrets.

He was so distracted by the thought of tiny naked chicks buzzing into a mirror like moths -- why couldn't more of the fairies be tiny naked chicks? -- that he walked straight into the wide, flat expanse of trunk in front of him. He fell back on his ass into a pile of shed leaves, all curled with raggedy edges and glinting faintly orange in the moonlight.

Okay. So he recognized the oak that smacked him in the face after all.

The trunk was enormous, close to redwood big with broad, branching roots that came up to his knees. He peered upward and saw that it stretched branchless past the lower edge of the surrounding canopy, which was good enough for him. He was just trying to remember which way was "widdershins" when a voice broke the woodsy silence.

"Oh hell," it said. "A human."

Why did everyone here say that like they were talking about slugs? If they hated humans so much, why spend centuries kidnapping them? On second thought, Dean could think of a couple of reasons. He shuddered, then shook it off and peered at the tree.

A face, upside down and seemingly carved from the whorls of the bark itself, scowled back at him.

"Oh look," said Dean. "A talking tree."

The scowl deepened. "What do you want, then?" the face asked. "I've got no gold, and I don't grant any wishes!"

Dean leaned against his sword and rubbed his head. He felt like an ass just thinking it, but Lola had been specific, and he was tired enough to try just about anything. "I, uh. Seek asylum with the Old Man -- dude, what the hell is your problem?"

Dean supposed he could be hallucinating, but he was sure the upside down face made of bark was laughing at him.

"Let me guess," it crowed. "The 'Old Man of the Forest'? Ooo, or maybe 'the Old Noble Ones', that was always one of my favorites. Read too many books, kid." The face grew serious. "But if you start on 'Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered', I might have to kill you."

Dean decided he hated this place. "Look, you bag of dicks, I'm just saying what Lola said I had to. You the asylum guy, or what?"

"Lola?" The face blinked, then twisted about until it was right side up, the moonlight highlighting the movement of long, spindly limbs and a narrow body that blended almost perfectly with the bark behind it. "L-O-L-A Lola?"

"What is it with you people and bad seventies songs?"

"Ishmael's from a book."

Dean spun. Lola broke away from the shadow of a spindly bush, appearing a little rumpled but otherwise none the worse for wear.

"Up and down, up and down." She grinned, and the moonlight caught her teeth brilliantly. "I have led them up and down."

"Lola, I presume," said Bark-Face.

"Hiya, Woody." Lola saluted. She'd ditched her sword -- or managed to stash it away somewhere that Dean was pretty sure he didn't want to know about. "You gonna let us in, or what?"

"Fine." Bark-Face -- 'Woody' made Dean think of cowboys, woodpeckers, and dirty jokes -- reached out with one extraordinarily long and skinny arm, fingers curling toward Dean's face. Dean let out something that, yeah, he'd probably have to admit was a bit of a shriek, and dodged back, only to land on his ass again, sharp, thorny fingers digging into the front of his shirt. "Brace yourself," the thing said, and then the world spun sickeningly out from under him as his stomach attempted to stay behind on the ground. Everything went blurry, streaked with colored flashes and punctuated by a shrill, gleeful giggle that thankfully reminded Dean more of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka than any of the demons he'd known in Hell.

The trip lasted a full five seconds -- precisely five seconds too long -- and then cut off so abruptly that Dean's brain seemed to make a bid to keep on going up into the sky. He slumped down onto warm, smooth wood, panting hard.

"I don't think he braced himself," Lola said. Dean just barely managed to give her the finger before he finally passed out.

*

He lay on something musty and green smelling. Words swirled over him too swiftly to catch, though, admittedly, he wasn't up to trying very hard. His throat felt callused, his stomach caving in on itself. His limbs were full of wet sand, shapeless and heavy. Something pressed down on his shoulder, sending hot spikes through his chest and up his neck. He choked on the moan they forced up his throat as the world abruptly sharpened.

"He's doing it again," one of the voices said. The words reverberated around in his skull.

"That means he's still alive."

Dean moaned again, trying to roll away from the pressure, but it held him pinned. A darkness beckoned in the back of his head, promising an escape, and he sunk back into it.

He woke this way a few times, catching bits of sentences that made no sense.

"-- he's defective?"

"-- made it this far --"

"-- don't make them that way anymore."

"-- Black Annis -- not meant to escape --"

Each time, the pressure returned, on his shoulder, his back, his wrists, or the soles of his feet. Each time, the agony lessened, but each time, the darkness swam back up, too heavy and warm to deny.

Dean couldn't be sure how much time passed before he woke up properly. Time in this world didn't seem to count the way it did in his own -- by all rights, the time he'd been in chains without food or water should have killed him, but all it did was make him weak and miserable. Now, with a little bit of rest, he at least felt almost human.

He lay on his side, on something rough but soft that smelled like damp wood, vegetation, and rain. The voices, Lola and the bark-faced thing, sounded softly from a short distance away. The space was warm but airy and he could hear the dim rattle of rain on a wooden roof.

"Won't be long now," said Bark-Face. "It'll be nice to get my bed back."

"Quiet, Old Man. You still owe me one more favor."

"And you, Brienne? What do you owe this human?"

"It'll be him that owes me. Three of them. Well, four, but I'll give him one as a freebie, I think."

"You just like the number three."

"And you don't?"

A pause then, an odd scratching, then the _tok-tok_ of wood knocking on wood. "Been a long time since a pixie held a human's favor," Bark-Face said. "A very long time."

"Been a lot of 'long time since' happening," said Lola. "The sidhe captured themselves a prince, did you hear?"

"Really?" Bark-Face sounded startled. "I wasn't sure those still existed. You don't think --"

"He doesn't look it."

"They might not, these days. From what I hear, the hero doesn't look it, either."

Lola snorted, a softer version of her angry, nasal hiss. "Hard to believe, that one." Dean listed to her shift, the soft _shush_ of her quills against the floor, and wondered if he'd have to call her "Brienne", now. He liked "Lola" better. "A real hero, Underhill. Haven't seen one of those in a kingdom's age. Princes are eternal, but heroes? I thought those had died off for sure."

"There'll always be heroes, child," Bark-Face said. "Just like the princes, the pixies, and the trees." The voice swam closer, following the path of a set of clicking footsteps, and stopped maybe a foot from where Dean lay. "Here, now. I think he might be waking up."

Lola, her steps a flurry of nail scrapes over a rough floor, scurried over. "Hey, Groucho." A slim, fuzzy hand tapped at his cheek. "Onward and upward, man."

"Patience." The tapping stopped, and Lola squawked. Dean cracked open one eye to a field of mottled green. "That's it," Bark-Face said. "Now the other."

Dean huffed through his nose, then sneezed himself onto his back. The motion stung like a bitch and he winced before blinking both eyes open.

Lola and Bark-Face stared down at him from maybe half a foot away.

"Jesus!" Dean threw up his arms and rolled again, reflexively ending up face down on the thick carpet of moss he was laid out on. Something tangled in his legs, heavy and fuzzy, and he kicked at it, even as the face-full of moss set him to sneezing again. "Warn a guy, next time."

"Okay then, Guy." Bark-Face's long, twig-like fingers wrapped around Dean's uninjured shoulder, tugging him up gently to a sitting position. "I'll try to remember next time I have to deal with a half-dead human. Now, if you're done sleeping, I'd rather you stopped sneezing all over my bed." Bark-Face peered in close again, giving Dean an inquiring look. Dean peered back.

"Holy crap," Dean said. "You have eyebrows."

Bark-Face let go of his shoulder with a scowl, sending Dean swaying. "I was wrong. He's clearly on his last legs. Completely brain damaged."

"Nah," said Lola. "I think he just came that way."

Dean pulled his eyes away from the strangely hypnotic movements of the bits of bark that made up Bark-Face's bark face with some effort, peering past to focus on Lola. She crouched a few feet away, where the shallow bowl of the moss bed rose up into a lip and leveled out into a low wooden shelf, which curved off behind her around the circumference of the crescent shaped room. The inner wall, no more than ten feet away from the outer one at the room's widest point, was the trunk of an enormous tree, full of little hollows filled with odd, foresty knick-knacks. The outer wall rose another few feet beyond the shelf, then opened up into enormous, glassless windows draped with vines and curtains of leaves under a low, sloping roof.

He was in a goddamn fairy bower. He tentatively reached up to touch his ears. He'd had to sit through five school districts worth of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ growing up, and he wasn't putting anything past Lola and her little bark-y buddy.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Bark-Face asked proudly. "Took ages to grow it just right."

Dean didn't even want to begin working out what he meant by that. He sat up just enough to set his head spinning and looked around for any sort of door. "Lovely." He swallowed, propping his head on his hand for a moment, then started scooting toward the edge of the bed. "You 'grew' this yourself, huh? I love the . . ." He gestured vaguely in a circle. "Uh. Wood." This wasn't going well. He peered sideways at Bark-Face. "Are you a nymph or something? 'Cause I thought they were all supposed to be hot chicks."

Lola snickered. Bark-Face huffed. "Nymph?" He straightened to his full, spindly height. Dean guessed the dude even had an inch or two on Sam, and thought it was better when he was crouching with Lola. "I," he said, voice pompous and proud. "Am a tree."

Dean blinked. "Ah," he said. "Okay then." He scooted a little faster, finally making it to the edge of the bed, taking bets with himself about how hard it might be to make it all the way upright. His stomach gurgled angrily. "Don't suppose you trees happen to keep food stocked up?"

Bark-Face looked at Lola. "I thought you said he was trying to escape?"

Lola shrugged. "Rescue a kid. He ate maybe half a pear in the dungeon."

They were talking over him, again, but Dean decided he didn't care enough to complain about it. He spotted a narrow opening in the wall along the far edge of the bower and pushed himself clumsily to his feet.

"Well," said Bark-Face as Dean swayed and winced. The scrapes on the soles of his feet stung against the floor. "I suppose he might be the martyr type." Bark-Face twisted his head perpendicular to his body as he watched Dean move. "I may have some nuts and seeds lying about," he offered, "if you're certain."

Great. Birdseed. But even that set his mouth watering. His stomach offered up another growl. Dean made it to the inner wall and leaned his weight against it, giving Bark-Face and Lola a narrow-eyed look. "What's with the grudging? Food that scarce around here?"

Lola glanced at Bark-Face. Bark-Face tilted his head even further, then straightened it. Dean half expected it to rattle, like those little skull-faced things in one of the animes Sam made him watch, back when Sam watched anime. Or was interested in anything at all other than hunting and cruising for hookers.

"You really don't know," Bark-Face said, his voice high and wondering. "You came here unprepared."

Dean frowned, pushing away from the wall. "Hey, I was prepared." He held up his hand and counted off on his fingers. "Silver. Salt. Iron. Even packed a spell or two." His fingers curled, wishing for the comforting weight of his gun. He thought of the look on the leprechaun's face, in the park near Lisa's house. The speed with which he and his cronies had taken the gun from him, along with the crowbar and the duffel bag of supplies. "Just -- didn't realize how fast the fuckers were."

Lola shuffled over to him, chittering softly through her teeth. "There, there," she said. "I'm sure you tried."

"You didn't know the _rules,_ " Bark-Face said, straightening to his full height and looming over them both. "Underhill isn't amateur hour."

"He's pretty scrappy," Lola offered. "You should have seen him against Annis and the redcap. He might've even done some damage, if he'd had a real sword."

Dean's body went cold. "It wasn't a real sword?" He thought of how the thing had practically bounced off the branches in the forest and swore under his breath.

"Well, yeah." Lola shrugged. "The sidhe aren't gonna keep live blades hanging on the walls. What, did you think I raided the armory?"

"The sidhe," said Bark-Face, voice full and pompous, "know the rules."

Dean decided trees were dicks. "Fine. So what are the _rules?_ "

Lola chittered again, patting Dean's arm in an almost motherly fashion. "The food here," she said. "Once a human's eaten it, they can never go back to their own world."

Dean stared at her. She looked back, black eyes wide, her mouth turned down at the corners. He looked to Bark-Face, who nodded solemnly. It took no more than a moment for the full implications to hit him.

Three bites. Three bites of a pear, in desperation in a dank dungeon. Just like that, it was over. He was stuck here. His knees buckled and he sank down against the wall, his injured shoulder sending sparks across his vision as it scraped against the rough wood.

He was stuck. Okay. He could deal with that. He'd made it through forty years in Hell. Barely, and not without fucking himself six different ways from Sunday, but he'd made it. He could do this. He could survive here. As long as he knew Ben and Lisa were okay.

But the fairies -- the sidhe, he was guessing -- had Ben. They'd locked Dean in a dungeon and starved him until they thought he was eating. He couldn't pretend that they wouldn't have done it to Ben, too. The kid was smart, though. Definitely smarter than Dean. He thought of the piles of books they'd found in Ben's room, the pages of print-outs. He'd done his homework before he ran off to try and hunt the bastards. Maybe he'd found the rule. Maybe he'd been prepared.

And maybe they were both royally fucked, and Lisa would spend the rest of her life in an empty house, waiting and wondering what had happened to her kid.

Dean's stomach churned around those three damn bites of pear, and he shoved away from Lola, pressing his side against the tree bark as he retched, his body shaking.

"Euugh," said Bark-Face. "I had no idea he could do that."

"Hey," said Lola. "At least it's not in your bed."

  
**Chapter Two: Braedens’ Heroes**   


The fae had been called last time by the father of the first person to go missing, so the family of the first missing kid was the obvious place to start looking for how they'd gotten in, this time. Bobby grabbed himself a shower in Lisa's guest bathroom, indulging for a moment in her fancy, shell-shaped soaps, then changed into his suit. Sam waited for him at the bottom of the stairs, adjusting his own tie.

"FBI?" he guessed, pulling out his fake badge. Bobby nodded.

"Missing kids," he said. "Right up the feds' alley. I'm surprised this place isn't crawling with them, already."

"Local cops figure they're runaways," Sam said. "They're all in the same grade, all run with the same crowd. They think the kids made some kind of pact."

Bobby frowned. "That include Ben?" he asked.

Sam nodded. "Why?"

"Hell of a coincidence, ain't it? Fae showing up, grabbing friends of the kid Dean likes to call his own. You said yourself you thought they might have some special interest in your brother."

"He's the one that got away," Sam said. "You think this was a trap."

"And Dean walked right into it, without even waitin' to find out what was really going on."

"He really cares about Ben and Lisa," Sam said. "I don't remember him acting this way about anyone else."

"Anyone 'sides you, you mean. And Dean's track record ain't exactly stellar when it comes to those he loves." Bobby pulled open the door. "Let's get on with it, then. I'll drive."

"Uh, Bobby," Sam said, looking from Bobby's half-junked Chevy to the Impala. "Let me drive."

Right. The junk-yard chic look didn't exactly scream "federal official". Neither did the Impala, but she, at least, had a better paint job.

The family of the first kid taken lived only a few streets down from the Braedens, maybe half a mile from the edge of the park. The utility pole at the end of the street was covered in "missing" posters, both for the kids and for a large number of local pets. A sleek silver rental was parked out front of the house, and as Sam pulled up, Bobby saw a familiar figure climbing into the car.

"Aw hell," he said. "Rufus."

Rufus looked up as Sam cut the engine, then climbed back out of the rental. He looked about as glad to see them as Bobby was to see him.

"Bobby," he said. "Didn't expect to see you outside Sioux Falls, any time soon."

Bobby stepped out onto the curb and leaned his arms against the roof of the Impala. "Rufus," he said. "The missing kids?"

"Well, it ain't the tourist trap," Rufus said. "You seen one historic homestead, you seen 'em all." He peered through the windshield of the Impala. "That Sam? Where's the other one?"

"Added himself to the list. You talked to the family?"

"Yeah. They don't know shit. Was headed for the next one, now."

"How clean was their house?" Sam asked. Rufus blinked.

"'Scuse me?"

"How clean was their house?" Sam asked again, slowing the question down a bit, as though Rufus might be losing his hearing. "Both parents work. It look like they have help?"

"Nah," Rufus said, still looking baffled. "Why, you hoping for a maid service referral?"

"The kids were taken by fairies," Sam explained. "Historically, some of them were known for doing housework."

"Right," Rufus said. "Historically. Guess maybe I'll want a look at that homestead, after all."

"You got an idea?" Bobby asked.

"Maybe," Rufus said. "I've read things. We'll wanna finish up with the families first, though."

"We should split up," Sam suggested. "Cover more ground."

"Sure," Bobby agreed. "Rufus can take family number two, and we'll head for family number three."

Sam opened his mouth as though to protest, but shut it again at Bobby's hard look. For all that they'd talked about it last night, Bobby still didn't trust Sam to go at this one on his own. He hadn't missed the book-shaped bulge in Sam's jacket, and he wasn't about to give the kid the chance to jump the gun on the banishing.

"We'll meet up at the Braedens', then," Sam said instead. "Compare notes."

"The Braedens'?" Rufus asked.

"Family number seven," Bobby said. "Kid apparently got it into his head to try some hunting of his own."

Rufus stared at them for a moment, rocking his head back. "Well hell. You people sure know how to pick 'em."

*

Dean pressed his head back against the bark behind him, his eyes squeezed shut as he ran the whole thing through his head over and over again. Humans who ate fairy food couldn't leave Fairy Land, or whatever the hell this place was. Dean had eaten a fairy pear. He was hungry enough that, if he had it in front of him, he'd probably do it again, even knowing the consequences. Ben had been in Fairy Land or wherever at least two real-world days longer than Dean had. Ben was a growing kid who ate something like four meals a day or more, when Dean was living with him. There was no way Ben hadn't had to eat _something_ since he'd gotten here.

Ben and Dean were both stuck in Fairy Land.

There had to be a loophole. There were always loopholes in these things. People in the old days dealt with fairies all the time; someone had to have figured out some kind of loophole along the way. Dean just had to find it. He had to find Ben, find a loophole, and get them both back to the real world where they belonged, likely fighting off a hoard of Black Annises and redcaps to do it, armed with a decorative sword, a hyperactive pixie, and an asshole tree.

Well. If anyone would be able to do it, it'd probably be a Winchester.

"Hey," he said, opening his eyes and looking up to where Bark-Face stood with his back to him, fussing with the moss bed. "Tree guy. What are the rules?"

Bark-Face turned. "What?"

"The rules. You know, the ones you're all appalled I don't already know. What are they?"

Bark-Face looked over at Lola, who sat crosslegged on the floor not far from Dean. She looked at her fingernails, then stuck one long thumb into her mouth and started chewing. Bark-Face looked back at Dean.

"Right," he said. "Because clearly it's my job to teach you everything you didn't bother to learn for yourself about my world." He turned back to his bed.

Dean set his teeth and narrowed his eyes, pushing himself carefully up to his feet. "Come on, you jackass --" Lola reached up, wrapped the hand not attached to the thumb in her mouth around Dean's elbow, and yanked, dragging him back down to sit with her on the floor.

"Don't," she said around her mouthful of thumbnail.

"That one of the rules?" Dean couldn't keep the anger and frustration from his voice. "Don't yell at the trees?"

"No," she said. "It's just rude." She pulled her thumb from her mouth with an audible _pop_ and wiped it on her pants. "He's already saved your life. So show a little respect."

"Saved my life," Dean repeated. "By dragging me back to his little bower."

"By offering you asylum. And pulling Black Annis' taint out of your wounds."

"Taint?" Dean reached up to run a careful hand over the still-stinging scratches along his shoulder. "You didn't say anything about a taint."

"There he goes again," Bark-Face said. "As though our purpose is to instruct him."

"Hush." Lola shot him a dirty look, then turned back to Dean. "I didn't think of it. But he did, and you're alive, so just say 'thank you' already, okay?"

Dean yanked his arm out of her grasp and went back to sitting against the wall. Bark-Face and Lola watched him, Lola expectant, Bark-Face smug. "Yeah, okay. Thanks."

"Don't expect it a second time," Bark-Face said, and turned back to fussing with his moss.

"Good," Lola said. She slapped her hands down onto her thighs and popped up into a crouch. "Now. You've got a boy to rescue and the Hunt on your tail --"

"The Hunt?"

Bark-Face groaned. Lola flicked a hand at him over her shoulder. "The Wild Hunt. Dogs, horses, hunters. Pretty much the best you'll get Underhill for tracking via overkill. I got them pixie-led --" She flicked the hand at Dean when he opened his mouth. "Don't ask, just know it worked. For now. They can pick up the trail again the minute you're out of Old Man's territory, which is pretty much as soon as you hit the ground out there, and they're not gonna fall for this pixie's tricks a second time."

Right. Supernaturally powerful hunters. And a decorative sword and a pixie. Dean wished Sam were here -- not only would he probably already know all the 'rules' Bark-Face kept harping on, but he'd probably riddle his way out of this Hunt's way, to boot. Assuming he didn't just say "well, you're screwed" and leave Dean to become a servant of the Lord Oberon for eternity.

Scratch that. It was probably better that Sam wasn't here. Dean didn't need to be playing conscience for his soulless brother on top of everything else, right now.

"This Hunt," Dean said. "They evil fairies?"

Lola sighed. " _Not_ fairies. But they were generally considered Seelie before the Reformation."

Dean rubbed his eyes. He really didn't need fairy history on top of everything else, but he didn't have much of a choice at this point. "Okay, smaller, less fair -- fae-y -- words."

Bark-Face snorted. Dean flicked him off without looking. Lola sat back and held up a finger.

"Seelie Court. I think your people considered them the 'good' fae. They were the ones who were less 'hurray, let's eat human babies' and more 'let's wear elegant dresses and hold fancy parties'. Unseelie Court were -- well, they did eat human babies. Still do. The Seelie were always all 'oh, you guys are so undignified, leave those human babies alone' and the Unseelie were all 'but they're tender and juicy and we're kinda nasty' and the people who weren't that into eating babies _or_ going to fancy dress parties were all 'whatever, check out this gold I got -- whoops, it's actually a leaf!'"

Lola snickered at that one, and Dean figured he knew which side of the fence she fell on. Which, he supposed, was good to know. It was probably the side he'd end up on, if he had to add it all up. The Seelie folks sounded a bit like the stuck-up-iest angels he'd met, while the Unseelie clearly had a thing or two in common with demons and monsters. And the rest . . . well, those were just the people. The shmoes who went to work every day and didn't always pay their taxes.

The people Dean had spent his entire life fighting for.

"Right," he said. "Parties, babies, leaves." Lola grinned at him, and he tried not to flinch at the shape of her fangs.

"Exactly. So, you know, it's like, the dawn of time, and the Seelie and Unseelie are all messing with each other and the rest of us are doing our thing, and that, that messing, that keeps going and going and going and going and going --"

"I get it," Dean said. Lola snapped up a hand.

"-- and going and going and going and going until suddenly, the human world that we got such a kick out of suddenly went 'check us out, we've got these big gasping machines! We don't need to leave out cream to get things done, any more! Nyeah!' and the Seelie were all 'but your eldest sons make such good slave labor!' and the Unseelie are all 'and they're super tasty!' and the humans were all 'we don't care, we're gonna dump salt around and not respect you any more', so the supply lines dried up, and the economy collapsed."

Dean blinked. Fairies had an economy?

"So the Seelie and the Unseelie realized they both pretty much needed the same things for their parties and their baby eating, and they decided they could totally let bygones go and work together. Poof!" Lola spread both hands, fingers stretched out. "Reformation. The Seelie and Unseelie courts dissolved into one big old unit, and the rest of us get to scrounge up whatever we can get on the side."

Dean nodded slowly. "So . . . which ones can be killed by silver, then?"

Lola sighed. "Not the Hunt."

"But iron's nasty for all of you, right?"

That got a sneer, Lola's upper lip curling impressively. "Yes," she said. "It's a horrible, nasty, kinda burny thing that makes our magic fizzle, and if you ever get anywhere near me with any, I'll make you think you're a shrub and leave you out in the fields for the Hunt's dogs."

Bark-Face cleared his throat. "A shrub?"

Lola shrugged. "Fine, a dormouse."

Dean wondered if maybe it was time he struck out on his own. "Look," he said. "If I'm going to get Ben back, I'm going to need some kind of real weapon. Not just a glorified butter knife."

Lola nodded. "Right." She bounced up onto the balls of her feet and offered Dean a hand. "For that, I'm thinking we need to go find us a Hero."

*

Rufus was right. The families of the missing boys didn't know anything, though they seemed more than willing to talk about the nothing that they knew at great length. It seemed most of them rather resented the police's conclusion that their children had simply run away, and were falling over themselves trying to give Sam and Bobby information that might lead to the kids being found. One thing quickly became apparent: all of the boys' last known whereabouts were in or around the park. Two had gone missing after a baseball game, one while collecting nature samples for a science project, one from a boy scout meeting, and two, it seemed, on their walks home from the school on the other side of community.

Why the hell the parents hadn't figured this out sooner and kept their boys away from the place, Bobby didn't ask. He'd learned long ago that there were certain things you just couldn't question, not without feeling like you were going to lose your mind.

Their next destination was obvious: they headed to the park themselves, hoping to pick up a trail.

The park was a sprawling thing, taking up a good 500 acres or more, with Lisa's neighborhood only circling the Mahaffie Homestead corner of it. There was a boat house offering rentals for the lake, closed down for the winter, and a skating rink just opening up. One section was given over to lighted tennis and basketball courts, another divided into tiny little camp grounds. Sam spread a map of the place he picked up from the visitor's center over the hood of the Impala and immediately started marking it with a red pen.

"The route the kids take home from school is here," he said, marking off one of the shorter trails running through an open, undeveloped field marked for "active recreation". "Nature boy told his parents he was headed over here." Sam circled a section of trees at the Homestead end of the lake. "And the baseball diamonds are here." This circle was in yet another location on the other side of the Homestead grounds, closer to the tennis and basketball courts. "I think we can mostly concentrate on the free-to-the-public areas on this end of the park. None of the disappearances were south of the boat house."

"Assuming the kids didn't wander off," Rufus said. "Or lie." Sam and Bobby looked up at him and he stared back. "What? You can't tell me kids never lie. They do it all the time."

"That'd be a helluva wander," Bobby pointed out. "I'm with Sam on this one. There weren't any reports of missing kids from the neighborhoods on the other side of the park. Which cuts things down to only about 250 acres."

"Oh," said Rufus. "Is that all."

"Here, look at this," Sam said. He drew bisecting lines across both his circles, connecting them to the ends of the line marking the path from the school, then up until they linked together just north of the boat house. It formed -- unsurprisingly -- a triangle, though not a very neat one.

"We've got three locations, Sam," Bobby said. "You're pretty much always gonna get either a triangle or a line."

"Yeah, but look what's in the middle of it?" Sam tapped the pen down in what Bobby approximated was the exact center of triangle he formed, then tilted it to the side so they could see what he marked. Bobby and Rufus leaned in. Rufus cursed.

"Tell me that ain't what I think it is."

"The Homestead," Sam said. "To be precise, the 'and Gardens' part. That right there is the 'traditional English garden' section."

"Old English gardens were pretty big on their decorative shrines," Rufus said.

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "To fairies?"

"Wouldn't be the stupidest thing I've seen in one of these places. We gonna check it out?"

"Not seeing any other option," said Sam.

"Wait a moment." Bobby held up a hand. "We've got six boys going AWOL in this park. I'm betting it's where Ben and Dean ended up, too. Sam, any idea which sections they mighta been in?"

Sam shook his head. "All I know is, Dean walked out here."

"From that Braeden house?" Rufus asked.. "That's a fair distance."

"So he probably didn't go in too deep," Bobby said. He took the pen from Sam, pinpointing the approximate location of Lisa's place, then looking around for the most likely spot Dean would have headed for to enter the park proper. "This picnic area's pretty close to the road, plenty of open ground around."

"First time, he was taken out of a cornfield. I don't think they care all that much about 'open'." Sam straightened up, looking out over the field behind them toward a small pavilion labeled with a blue letter "B". "He would have come in this way, probably headed straight in." He started walking, not looking back to see if Rufus or Bobby was following. Bobby glanced at Rufus and saw him looking back. Rufus shrugged.

"He's the expert on Dean," he said.

"Hell," said Bobby. "I'm not dressed for this much walking."

*

Bark-Face gave Dean a pair of boots made out of some sort of soft, tightly woven plant fiber, with thick, surprisingly supple soles. When Dean made impressed noises, Bark-Face glared at him and said something like "where do you think rubber comes from, dumb ass?" only in more snooty, tree words. Dean got the feeling the boots were just to get him out of there faster.

Getting down from Bark-Face's bower was about as fun as going up, only with sun-lit, vertigo inducing visuals. Dean counted it as a personal victory that he didn't pass out, this time.

Lola led the way as soon as it was clear Dean was going to be able to remain upright, loping forward with long, quick strides, pausing occasionally and glancing back. After the first half hour -- a very approximate measure -- Dean realized she was sizing him up, making sure he could get through the holes she picked in the vegetation. It was a nice gesture, though imperfect. She seemed to have trouble grasping the concept that he had shoulders, while she was able to slip through any space bigger than her head.

Dean waited until they'd settled into a kind of rhythm, her darting up ahead, turning back to make sure he could follow, then darting ahead again before he decided to strike up a conversation again.

"Right, so. The Hunt."

Lola made an affirming noise as she pushed aside a branch as thick as her arm, then gestured him through. Dean gave it a wary look -- the branch was just at the right height to come swinging back at his crotch if her grip slipped -- and edged through sideways.

"You said they have dogs?" he asked, stepping aside so she could take the lead again.

"And horses," she said. "But they only really hunt at night. We've got a little while."

"Great." They hiked along a few more feet, Dean ducking under a branch too tall for Lola to have even noticed. "What kind of dogs?"

Lola shrugged. "Big ones."

Even better. "Yeah, but -- I mean, are they normal dogs, or, like, supernatural dogs?"

Lola looked back at him and frowned. "They're dogs."

Dean shook his head. "But what are they like? What do they do?"

Another shrug. "Dog things. You know, they sniff and they howl and they get really annoyed when you poke them in the nose with something sharp."

Dean wondered if there were things here that _didn't_ get annoyed when you poked them in the nose with something sharp, then decided that, unless he was going to be going up against one, he really didn't want to know.

"So. They're just dogs."

"Yes," said Lola. She gave him one of those 'humans are so weird' looks that Dean was slowly getting used to. "Dogs."

"Then we should find a stream or something," Dean said. "Walk in the water for awhile. That throws dogs off the scent."

Lola stopped and looked up at him, her hands on her hips. She pursed her lips. "How do you know that?"

It was Dean's turn to shrug. "It's a pretty standard trick," he said. "They can tell where we went into the water, and would eventually find where we came back out, but they won't know which way we went. It might buy us some time."

"Okay," said Lola, starting off through the trees again. "There's a river up ahead. But it's fairly open. They'd be able to spot us."

Dean looked up at the trees, pressing in on all sides. "Not until they're on the river, too. You know, unless they can fly."

Lola stopped and turned again, her eyes narrowed. Dean groaned.

"The dogs can fly."

"Well, yeah. They're dogs."

It occurred to Dean that Lola might have a very different idea of what constituted a standard dog than he did.

"Still," Lola continued. "It's worth a shot. And like I said, the river's pretty clear." She reached up a hand to smack one of the low branches that just about every tree other than Bark-Face's seemed to have. "We'll be able to move a lot faster. Just, you know, watch out for the salmon."

"The salmon." Dean was afraid to actually ask.

"Yeah, you let 'em get going, they'll talk your ears off. Tell you all kinds of things you just don't want to know."

Right. Of course. Because even a fish here couldn't just be a fish.

It took another half hour or so to reach the river. The trees ended so abruptly that even though Lola stepped aside and called out a warning, Dean still nearly ended up tumbling down the steep embankment. She let out a bright bark of laughter before reaching out to take his arm and steady him. "You look like you could use a break," she said.

Dean bristled. A couple of hours hiking in the woods was nothing to a seasoned hunter, and he sure as hell didn't need some upstart creature telling him to stop and rest. Even if he was exhausted, still starving, and getting desperately thirsty. He wondered if the talkative salmon would taste good smoked over an open fire, then shook himself. It was still possible that his automatic reaction to finding out what fairy food meant for a human had gotten the pear out of his system. Really unlikely, but possible. Besides, maybe he could swing a Greek myth kind of deal. He thought maybe he could handle wintering in Fairy Land, if it meant Lisa and Ben would be okay.

So, no food for him. No water, either, at least not going down his throat. He didn't seem to actually be dying of thirst or hunger, so all he had to do was keep holding out, right?

He looked down the embankment, then out across the wide, slow moving river stretching as straight as a canal as far as the eye could see in both directions and felt his stomach cramp.

Yeah. Okay. Maybe he could use a break.

"I'd rather get some distance in the water, first," he decided, then began slowly lowering himself down the cliff-like face of the embankment, grabbing onto roots as he went and hoping the river was as shallow here as it looked. He dropped down with a splash. The water level came up to about his mid-thigh, with a stronger current than he expected, and it was _cold_ , but nothing he couldn't deal with, as long as he kept moving. He looked back up to Lola, who was watching him with narrow-eyed focus, clinging to the very top of the bank with her toes. "How much longer do we have until nightfall, anyway?"

Lola looked up, studying the sky for a moment, then shrugged. "Oh, you know. Awhile."

Dean had a feeling he wasn't going to get a better answer than that.

Lola scrambled down to the water's edge as easily as most people would walk down a city sidewalk, then leaned out, still clinging to the wall of dirt and roots, her nose inches from the water. She sniffed, grimaced, then gingerly lowered herself in, lifting the hem of her sweater clear as she sank in past her waist. She looked up at Dean, her nose twitching, then turned and started off, following the flow of the current.

She looked ridiculous, bobbing faintly up and down, holding her sweater out almost a full foot to either side of her like it was a fancy skirt, the fabric pinched between thumb and forefinger, with the other fingers splayed out into the air. He wondered how long she planned to keep it up, then started off after her.

The bed of the river was alternately rocky or slimy, changing just often enough to keep Dean from being able to move along with much in the way of speed. He wondered if it evened out further in, but when he tried moving closer to the center of the river, he discovered the current there was much faster, making it just as hard to keep his balance. So he shuffled along in the shallows, more grateful than ever for Bark-Face's tree-boots.

They stopped maybe an hour later, when the river took a sharp turn to the right and the bank hollowed out into a short, silty beach. Dean took off his boots to dump them out in the mud, while Lola, whose sweater had remained perfectly dry, brushed out the fur on her feet with a tiny comb she'd pulled from some pocket or other. Dean spotted a nice looking, smooth, flat rock by the water's edge, just about the right size to fit into his palm and picked it up, pursing his lips thoughtfully.

"You gonna throw that?" Lola asked. Dean frowned over at her, and she hunched her shoulders in. "Isn't that what people do when they're hanging out by the water? Throw rocks into it?"

Dean looked back down at the rock, then out at the water. "Some people, I guess." He hefted the rock in his hand, then bent forward to dip it into the water. "You still got one of those swords?"

Lola nodded, reaching into her sweater to pull it out. The blade was just short enough that Dean could almost believe it actually fit in there, but he'd come to the conclusion that Lola's pockets had to be portals to a secret other dimension. She kept way too much stuff in there. By rights, she should look like the Michelin Man. "I thought it might work to scare some folk off. You know, the ones who weren't hired to hunt you down."

Dean held out his hand for it, and Lola gave it a light toss. Dean caught it and examined the edge. He couldn't quite make out what type of metal it was made out of. Fairies' allergy to iron made steel somewhat unlikely, but it didn't look like it was silver, either. It had definitely been made to be decorative. He saw none of the nicks or irregularities that he'd expect from a sword that had actually been sharp and used in battle, only a smooth, dull edge. He hefted the rock again, decided his idea certainly couldn't hurt, and dunked it once more in the river water before carefully running the edge of the sword against it. The shushing sound of metal over rock was soothing, and he did it again with the opposite edge, then checked both the blade and the rock for damage. It wasn't like this thing came labeled with a grit size. He spotted a few deeper scratches when he angled the blade in the light and shrugged. Sharpening the sword this way would be inelegant, but it would at least be fairly fast.

He glanced up and noticed Lola watching him with interest. "What?"

"Where'd you learn to do that?"

Dean shifted around in the silty mud until he found something resembling a comfortable position, and set to work with earnest. "My dad taught me. A good hunter doesn't let his tools go dull."

"I thought none of you hunted, any more. Figured by now you people would have a big, gasping metal machine that made all your food for you."

"I don't hunt for food." Dean caught a small flinch out of the corner of his eye, and wondered if Lola realized that, in his world, she'd be one of the things he'd be hunting.

She didn't say another word to him until he decided he was ready to go, and he thought that maybe she did.

*

They found Dean's duffel bag washed up among the reeds at the edge of the lake closest to the road. Sam splashed right up to it, seeming oblivious to what had to be frigid water soaking the cuffs of his jeans. He dragged the bag up into the mud and worked the zipper open, pulling out a crowbar, one of Dean's machetes, and a canister of salt, which he upended, pouring water out the top.

"Empty," he said.

"That cannot be good for the fishes," said Rufus.

"Looks like we found the spot," said Bobby, turning to look up the shallow incline toward the Homestead. "It ain't in your triangle, Sam, but it's definitely close to the gardens."

Sam didn't answer, his eyes aimed down at the water. He splashed deeper, up to his knees, and leaned down to pick up something on the bottom. "Bobby," he said. "What if Dean never made it to the fairy realm?"

He was holding Dean's favorite gun, the pearl handled Colt 1911. Water dripped out the barrel.

Bobby felt himself go cold.

"We've been assuming they lay the trap to catch him," Sam said. "What if it was to kill him?"

Bobby swallowed, then shook his head. "We can't think that way, Sam. If Dean was dead, we'd know about it."

"How, exactly?" asked Rufus. "You got psychic powers you ain't tellin' us about, Bobby?"

"No. But Dean's got himself a guardian angel of sorts."

"Cas has been busy," Sam said. "He might not bring Dean back again."

"He'd at least check in, right?" Bobby refused to believe otherwise. "Dean ain't dead."

"We'll find out eventually," Rufus said. "His body'd wash up at some point. Well, unless the fairies gave him cement shoes."

Sam tucked the gun carefully into the duffel, then swung it up on his shoulder, looking past Rufus down the bank of the lake. It was bizarre to see him so calm about the idea that Dean might've been drowned. Dean had said that Sam didn't care about anything, these days, but Bobby had never seen such a clear example of that.

Sam frowned. "I don't remember seeing pony rides on the map."

Rufus spun, and Bobby followed Sam's gaze past his friend's shoulder.

The horse wasn't exactly what Bobby'd call a pony. It stood at least fifteen hands high, its body an almost blinding white. It had its head down, drinking the muddy water at the edge of the lake.

"Its mane's wet." Rufus said, and he took a few steps backward, as did Bobby. Sam, on the other hand, started splashing toward it.

"Don't get too close, Sam," Bobby warned. "I'd lay good money on that bein' a kelpie."

Sam hefted the crowbar he'd pulled from Dean's duffel. "I'm okay with that," he said, then set his jaw, raised the crowbar, and charged.

*

Lola went under so fast that, for a moment, Dean thought she'd just vanished on him again. One moment she was walking along in the river, her sweater held out primly like it was her best petticoat -- Dean didn't actually know what a petticoat was, but he thought it had to be some kind of skirt -- and the next she was gone, leaving only a long trail of bubbles in her wake.

Even after he realized what happened, Dean had a moment of hesitation, wondering if he should just leave her there, let it be one less fairy to harass humanity.

It wasn't his proudest moment.

He strode forward, hefting the sword he'd only managed to get about halfway sharpened, peering into the murky water of the river as he went. His foot struck something softer than a river rock, sending up another surge of angry bubbles, and he took a deep breath and dropped down to see what he could find.

The visibility was crap and the water stung his eyes, but he made out a struggling, spiny form clinging to the rocks on the bottom. Something was trying to drag Lola sideways, into the deeper, swifter water. Dean looked over, but wasn't able to make out what it was. He lashed out with his sword anyway, hoping he didn't catch Lola in the leg. The angle was all wrong for him to get the leverage to actually sever anything, but he got the feeling she'd be pretty pissed at him if he managed to cut her, and he was relying pretty heavily on her guidance, here.

That was a mistake, he knew. It was one thing to hook up with a local when it was the deep woods of Colorado, but the fact was, he had no idea what sort of motivations Lola had. She could be leading him straight into a trap. But without her, he'd still be stuck in that dungeon, trying to wriggle his way out of the cuffs so he could stuff himself on stale bread. She was the only real hope he had, even if she was planning on turning on him at some point, and that meant he couldn't let her be drowned by . . . whatever the hell was trying to drown her.

The sword struck something fleshy and caught, nearly getting yanked out of his hand before he managed to wrench it back. Whatever it was let out a bubbly, underwater howl and let Lola go.

They both surfaced almost simultaneously, like the world's crappiest synchronized swimmers -- and synchronized swimmers were pretty full of crap. Dean gasped in another breath and brandished his sword, but saw nothing more than a thin, greenish swirl on the surface where the thing he'd struck had been. He backed away, anyway, offering Lola an arm to cling to as she thrashed in the water, hissing and coughing like a pissed off cat. She grabbed onto him and proceeded to scale his arm, straight up until she had her legs wrapped around his biceps, just below his uninjured shoulder, her hands on either side of his head. Dean held as still as he could, not sure where her quills were pointed, and not wanting to get any tiny, pinprick stabs. He held his sword out in the direction of the thing that had pulled her under until the water settled down again and seemed to be running clear, then let his hand drop.

Lola finally let her hisses peter out as she caught her breath, until she fairly hung from his arm, her chin resting against his clavicle.

"Dammit, Peg," she muttered. Then, reluctantly, "Thanks."

Dean tilted his head away from hers, far too aware of the prickly bits she had in lieu of hair. "Guess this means we're down to two, huh?"

He thought maybe she'd deny it, or at least deny knowing what he meant. Instead, she held quiet, quivering faintly against his shoulder. She weighed practically nothing, even soaking wet as she was, but she was awkwardly placed, and Dean could feel her dragging him sideways.

"You heard that?" she asked.

"Yep." Dean waited as she pushed herself up off his shoulder and dropped back into the water with a splash. "Out of curiosity, which one was the freebie?"

"Helping you find your boy," she said, not looking up at him. She raised her hands to the hem of her sweater, then seemed to realize all her hard work at keeping the thing dry was totally wasted and let them drop. "Which, you know, pretty much includes all the others."

Dean nudged her with his elbow, then nodded down the river, before starting forward himself. She followed suit, walking more alongside him, this time, than leading. "So you're saying we're even?"

She glanced over out of the corner of her eye, then directed her gaze firmly back on the surface of the river. Whether she was looking for further attackers or just avoiding his gaze, he couldn't be sure. Probably a mix of both. "Yeah. I didn't really mean any of that back there, anyway, you know?"

"Then why did you tell Bark-Face you were collecting favors?"

"He's a tree." Lola seemed to think this explained the whole thing. Dean grunted, and she glanced over again, heaving a sigh. "Trees don't -- he wouldn't have understood, you know? About your boy. Trees don't nurse their young. They don't raise them and teach them everything they need to know to survive in the world. Old Man doesn't understand family. He just understands duty. Like owing someone."

Dean ducked his head, absorbing all of this. "So, when he helped me. . . ."

"He was paying back favors he owed me. That's usually how it works Underhill." Lola looked up then, catching Dean's eye. "I guess it all works differently where you're from."

Dean looked back, holding her gaze for a long moment before looking back at the surface of the water, trying to spot any tell-tale bubbles that might warn of another attack. The river seemed to be just like it had always been, though, quick, fresh, and empty.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked at length. "What's the real reason?"

Lola was quiet for so long that he thought she would refuse to answer the question. When she spoke, it was soft, not much louder than the sound of the river itself.

"I know how you feel," she said. She picked her way gingerly through the rocks for a few more steps. "I had a kid."

Dean noted the past tense, and decided not to press for details.

Once they were well past the area where Lola had been dragged under, Dean started to relax a bit. They'd made it a good ways down the river without problems before. The attacker -- Peg Powler, Lola explained, another hag like Black Annis, only green and watery -- had been injured, and besides that, Dean figured she probably kept to the same area of the river. Lola couldn't know everything about this place. She'd probably just forgotten about Peg's hiding spot. Still, he kept a firm eye on Lola, who was marching determinedly along, now. Dean realized she'd lost some of her childish glow with the admission of having been a mother. She was still small and just as absurd, but he noticed a certain ferocity to her behavior now that he'd missed before. He wondered what happened to her kid.

They passed a small clearing on the left, a grassy meadow where the river slowed and swirled into a pool, and Dean considered asking to take another break so he could finish sharpening his sword. He opened his mouth, but before he could get a word out, a creature like a giant, horned snake came sliding out of the pool, mouth gaping, displaying a vicious set of fangs at least half as long as Dean's sword. It topped off at least ten feet above the water level, a reddish brown thing with tiny, useless looking wings and clawed hands held close to its thin chest. It loomed over them, hissing and swaying faintly back and forth like a cobra.

"Kill it!" Lola shouted. "Kill it, kill it, kill it!"

Dean raised his sword -- only to have his feet yanked out from underneath him, sending him splashing down under the water and dragged straight toward the deepest part of the pool.

The current here was slow enough for the water to take on a glassy green tone, allowing Dean to make out what had a hold of him. It wasn't, as he might have guessed, the dragon-y thing, though he could see the rest of its body coiled up against the center of the pool. Instead, he found himself face to face with a wide, shark-toothed grin and narrow, filmy white eyes. He wondered how many of these hags there were hanging out in Fairy Land, then caught sight of a jagged, still oozing slash in the creature's arm. Peg Powler, it seemed, had been biding her time, looking for the perfect opportunity for revenge. And she'd brought a friend.

He lashed out with his feet as best he could, wishing that Bark-Face had thought to make the boots with steel toes, but he wasn't able to break Peg's grip. The pool was deep enough that even when he tried pulling the rest of his body straight up, he couldn't break the surface with more than the tips of a few fingers, and he was rapidly running out of air. He'd lost the sword when she'd pulled him under, so he bent double, aiming for Peg's marble-like eyes with his thumbs.

The tail of the dragon uncoiled around them, thrashing under the water and sending both Peg and Dean tumbling. Peg's fingers lost their clamping grip on Dean's ankles and he flailed his legs, hoping to get a few good kicks in before he started floundering for the surface. The dragon thrashed again, sending what felt like a large rock smashing into Dean's knee, even as its tail smacked him in the head, and for a dizzying moment, Dean was sure he was going to lose consciousness and drown, right then and there.

Peg screeched into the water again, and Dean started to realize that they were being bombarded. A series of small rocks, the largest no bigger than a tennis ball, were raining down into the pool from above. The water slowed their momentum, but they had more than enough force to bruise, and neither Peg nor the dragon seemed to be big fans. Dean did his best to ignore them -- the water was slowing him down, too, making them difficult to dodge -- and kicked toward the surface of the pool.

Lola grabbed him around the chest, and Dean was once again reminded of her unusual strength as she pulled him up onto the bank of the pool. Dean did his best to help as soon as his feet hit solid ground, and between them, they managed to scramble their way up onto the grass. He stared back at the pool, watching as the tail end of the dragon disappeared back under water with an angry flick, then flopped his head down and groaned.

"Right," he said. "Guess I'm back to owing you, now."

Lola shook her head, staring up the bank at something in the meadow. Dean swallowed before following her gaze, inwardly praying that it wasn't another hag or monster out to get them.

A hooded figure stood in the middle of the meadow, silhouetted in the sunlight. It wore a long cloak that just brushed the tips of the blades of grass and carried a large, lumpy bag over one shoulder, with something long and very thin over the other. The wind picked up as Dean watched, sending the ends of the cloak flapping and pressing it tight against the figure's side. It was impossible to make out the person's face, but Dean would recognize that figure anywhere. He sat up.

"I think," said Lola, "that we found our hero."

"Oh my god," said Dean. He shoved himself awkwardly to his feet, only just able to keep from going down again when his battered knee protested. The hero reached out a hand and caught his elbow until he regained his balance. Dean ducked his head to look under the edge of the cloak. "Oh my god," he said again, shock dropping his voice to a whisper. " _Lisa._ "

*

Lisa's towels were never going to be the same again. Bobby handed Sam a third one as he tried to rub the mud out of his hair.

"Should have tried the shampoo," Bobby said. "She's stocked up on some good stuff."

"We told you not to get too close," said Rufus.

"You said it was a kelpie." Sam glared at them through sopping wet bangs. "That wasn't a kelpie."

"Each uisge," Rufus said. He held up one of Lisa's books, showing a picture of a fish-man-horse thing. "Says here it's more dangerous than a kelpie and prefers sea water or lakes. Kelpies prefer rivers." He looked over at Bobby. "Good thing you didn't actually lay that bet."

"At least I got it," Sam said. He tossed the towel aside, apparently giving up on his hair. "It's dead, or back in the fairy world."

"And do you feel better now?" Rufus asked. "You gonna actually listen to your elders?" Sam gritted his teeth, and Rufus grinned.

"So," Bobby said, looking to break the moment. "I'm guessing the Mahaffie Homestead is our next stop."

"Right." Sam started toward the door. "Let's go, then."

"Now hang on a second." Rufus put out his hand as if to grab Sam's arm, but stopped when the boy turned to stare at him. "I don't know about you two, but I'd rather get a bit more information about this place before we start breaking in."

Sam sighed. "We've already wasted a lot of time. We need to stop the fairies."

"We need to know what we're up against." Bobby gave Sam's muddy hair a pointed look. "Doesn't do us or Dean any good to go off half-cocked."

Sam relented, but not without giving Bobby a cold stare. "Fine," he said. "I'll look into the history of the house. I guess you two probably need some sleep."

"What," said Rufus. "And you don't?"

Sam's stare transferred to Rufus. "No," he said. "I don't."

Rufus shot Bobby a look, and Bobby could only shrug. "Well," Rufus said at length. "Less research for me, at least."

*

Lisa froze, her hand tightening on the end of what Dean now realized was a golf club, maybe a nine-iron. She ducked her head, glancing past Dean toward where Lola waited.

"Around here," she said, "they mostly call me 'Hero'."

Dean frowned, for a moment wondering if this was some sort of spirit or doppelganger, and not really Lisa at all. If so, it was accurate down to the least detail, from the slight cant of her hips to the battered, embroidered yoga bag she carried over her shoulder. And the golf club, of course. He couldn't say for certain, but he had a feeling those were pretty rare in Fairy Land.

She caught his eye, then, and he knew he could eliminate amnesia from the list of possibilities, too. He frowned, and she tilted her head, eyes flicking to Lola and back, and it finally clicked. He blamed his general state of desperately needing a burger for it taking as long as it did.

Names had power. It wasn't a power most humans knew how to exploit, but it was there nonetheless, and if anything would latch onto a name and use it to screw the hell out of a person, it was going to be a fairy. Lisa wanted to make sure that Lola didn't know her real name.

Which meant he was stuck calling her "Hero" and feeling like a tool.

"Right." He swallowed and nodded back. "Hero."

Lola appeared at his side, staring bright eyed up at Lisa, then turning to look at Dean. "I take it you two know each other?"

Dean kept his eyes on Lisa, lifting his eyebrow to let her know he'd follow her lead on this. Lisa flashed him a tight smile. "You could say that," she told Lola. "He's my ex."

"Groucho, you dog." Lola elbowed him in the hip, then looked up at Lisa again. "You're here for the boy, too?"

"Yes." Lisa's voice was tight but firm, and she gave Dean a challenging look, as though Dean was going to start arguing with her then and there. Not that Dean didn't consider it. It was bad enough he was probably going to be stuck here. He didn't want Lisa enslaved to some sidhe bastard, to boot.

There'd be time enough for that, later. Right now, there was still the dragon-infested river behind them to consider. "We should probably get going," he said, turning to shoot a quick look back. "Over land, this time."

"Yeah," Lola agreed. "I'm thinking Peg's pretty pissed at us."

Lisa swung the club down from her shoulder, dropping the head down behind a rock the size of a ping pong ball. Not a nine iron, Dean saw, but a pitching wedge. He grabbed Lola by the back of her sweater and pulled her out of the way. Lisa took a swing -- she'd always been better at the power shots than putts -- and sent the rock shooting down into the water.

And the Campbell clan had made fun of his golf clubs. Those things were seriously useful, even if this one was likely never going to be any good on an actual green again.

"Just so it doesn't think it should follow us," Lisa said, shouldering the club again.

"I like her, Groucho." Lola beamed up at Lisa, tiny fangs glinting. "What'd you do to screw it up?"

"Yeah, we're really not going to talk about that." Dean pushed her toward the edge of the meadow, shooting a long suffering look back at Lisa. Lisa smirked, mouthing 'Groucho?' and Dean rolled his eyes.

"Yeah," he muttered. "'Cause 'Hero' is way better."

"I like it," Lisa said. "It's very Shakespearean." She looked him over as they fell into step behind Lola, heading back toward the trees. "You okay? You look like crap."

"It's been a long --" Dean broke off as he realized he had no idea how much time had passed since he'd gotten himself jumped in the park. "-- while. Tell me you brought more than just a golf club with you."

"Of course. I just wanted to try sticking with something I have practice using." Lisa swung her yoga bag down, opened it up, and pulled out one of Dean's spare sawed-offs. Dean absolutely could have kissed her, especially when he spotted several energy bars among the bag's contents. His stomach growled loudly, and Lisa offered him both the shotgun and a peanut butter Clif bar.

They passed the next several minutes in silence, Lola leading the way several paces ahead, Lisa following along, smacking branches out of the way with her golf club, and Dean eating his way slowly through two Clif bars and sipping absolutely the most amazing bottled water he'd ever had.

Yeah, Lisa coming after Ben was really, really dumb. She wasn't a hunter, wasn't much of a fighter at all -- golf skills notwithstanding -- and she was one more person in this world for Dean to worry about getting back home with as few injuries and traumas as possible, but right then, he was really, really glad she was here.

*

"And if you'll follow me this way, we'll take a look at the newly restored English garden." The Mahaffie Homestead docent walked backwards as she spoke, smiling widely at her small tour group, which included two older women and a bored looking young man in his late teens, as well as Bobby, Sam, and Rufus. Bobby had been surprised to see that the docent was a young woman herself, no older than Sam was. Like Rufus, he'd been on any number of these tours throughout his years hunting, and the volunteers at historical houses were much more likely to be women in their sixties or older.

The docent turned as they stepped through an opening in the low stone wall that separated the gardens from the park proper and held her hands out to either side, inviting the group to admire the greenery. "This garden has been very exciting for us here at the Mahaffie Homestead. We first discovered the remains of the original garden about ten years ago, and it's taken a lot of hours of hard research to recreate Mary Francis' vision. Now, as I mentioned back in the front parlor, Mary Francis was the fifth lady of the Mahaffie Homestead. While all her predecessors had been farmers, like their husbands, Mary's family were servants, having worked for an English noble family before immigrating to the United States in 1899, and she found she had no talent for large scale crops or livestock. So she decided to spend her time creating a traditional garden, like those she'd seen on the rich estates in her home country. The garden made her very popular among the other ladies in the area, and helped turn the Mahaffie farm into a household name, which in turn provided the funds for keeping up the beautiful house we've just left. . . ."

And the docent continued. It seemed she couldn't get enough of describing the daily lives of the women who'd lived in the area a hundred years ago. Bobby tuned her out after awhile, turning his attention to the garden itself, looking for any signs that it really was the center of the fairy invasion. The interior of the garden wall was lined in willow trees and flower beds full of bright, vibrant blooms that Bobby was certain had to be out of season. He leaned over a tall stalk of bluebells. He was no gardener, himself, but it seemed to be doing pretty well, despite the cold.

"Please don't touch the flowers," the docent said. "I know it seems like it should go without saying, but we had someone pick several of our primroses just the other night, and we want our garden to be enjoyable to everyone who comes here."

"These are all the plants that that Mary woman had planted here, then?" Bobby asked. The docent -- he couldn't for the life of him remember her name, or if she'd even given them one -- nodded.

"We have several of her diaries in our library, and she kept detailed notes on her garden. That, combined with the excavation work of our archeology department, and we can be quite certain of what sorts of plants she used where." She smiled. "We had to cheat a little bit here and there -- we didn't want to plant foxglove so near where children would be playing, for instance, so we switched it out with the comfrey you see over there -- but it's as close to the original garden as we could make it. These flower beds are all laid out in a spiral pattern around the central entertaining area, which is right down this way."

The little old ladies "ooo"ed, and one of them flashed Bobby a bright smile. He guessed she approved of his apparent interest in flora. He nodded back as pleasantly as he could before turning toward Rufus and Sam.

"Bluebells, primroses, foxglove," he said. "Am I remembering wrong, or were those all big time fairy plants?"

"You're right," said Sam, keeping his voice low. "Same with the trees."

"People keep flowers around all the time, though," Rufus pointed out. "Ain't like we're getting greenhouses all turned into child-trafficking depots."

"Maybe it's got to do with the pattern of it. Greenhouses don't tend to be set up in a spiral." Bobby walked as they talked, following along behind the tour at a bit of a distance as they made their way inward. The spiral was lined on both sides with the flower beds and trees, as well as a low, thick ornamental hedge, carefully trimmed down into the traditional box shape. They reached the center after a couple of twists, and Bobby cursed.

The "entertaining area", as the docent had called it, was a little round clearing at the center of the garden. Instead of the cast iron or wicker patio furniture Bobby had been expected, the seating was made up of large, rough-hewn stone benches and tables arranged in a circle.

It looked, more than anything else, like a miniature Stonehenge.

"Uh, ma'am," Sam said, raising his hand slightly. "When was the restoration of the garden finished?"

The docent's bright smile went three shades brighter and she fairly rocked forward on her toes. "We set the last stone here just about two weeks ago."

Bobby bit back another curse. Two weeks ago was when the first child had disappeared.

"Well," Rufus said, his eyebrows high and his lips pursed bemusedly. "That'd sure as hell do it."

  
**Chapter Three: Riders on the Storm**   


They reached the end of the forest after a few hours of hiking and started across an open, hilly plain full of rocky ground that sent sharp stabs of pain up Dean's injured leg. It was noticeably afternoon, now, edging on toward evening, though the sun seemed to be taking its dear, sweet time getting across the sky. Dean wondered how much further Lola planned to have them walk, but didn't want to be the obnoxious one asking "are we almost there, yet?" Especially when both Lola and Lisa seemed to be completely unaffected by the long walk.

When he stumbled for the third time, Lisa seemed to finally get fed up with it and called out to Lola to stop. She sat down crosslegged on one of the larger rocks jutting up from the ground and pulled Dean down next to her. "Here," she said, pulling her yoga bag into her lap. "I've got some painkillers in here, somewhere."

Dean leaned over to peer over her shoulder as she dug through the bag. Along with the food and water provisions, she'd packed a box of salt rounds, two knives and a serving fork from her grandmother's good silver collection, several packets of dried herbs, a tall can of sea salt, and a flat rock about the size of his palm with a hole through the middle. Dean picked up this last one, tossing it once in his palm.

"A self-bored stone?" he asked. Lisa nodded.

"I found it a couple years ago, and was using it as a paperweight. You can use it to see the fae in our world, even when you don't have the Sight."

"Right." Pastor Jim had mentioned looking through a self-bored stone once or twice, to see things that were otherwise invisible, but Dean could already see the fairies, a side effect of his first very brief visit to Fairy Land. "How do you know about all this stuff?"

Lisa shrugged, pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen, which she handed over to Dean along with the diminishing bottle of water. "Once upon a time," she said, "I was an eight year old girl."

"And little girls love their fairy tales."

"Not all of them," Lisa said. "But, yeah, I did. Got pretty into fairy stories for awhile, right up through high school. Maybe half the books the kid had in his room belonged to me."

"Huh." Dean shook a few pills into his hand and tossed them back, swallowing them dry. "All that time, I never knew I was sleeping with a nerd."

Lisa snorted and shoved his shoulder. "Says the guy who can list five or more different spooks or monsters for any given situation."

"That's not nerdy," Dean protested. "That's useful."

"And so is this." Lisa spread her hands and smiled.

"You didn't know that, at the time."

"No, but I always hoped. Well, right up until you showed up and told me my son was replaced by a changeling."

Lola, who'd flopped down on another rock a couple feet away, snorted. "Ugh," she said. "Changelings."

Lisa looked over. "So those were fae?" She glanced at Dean. "I wasn't sure -- you guys never said."

Lola bounded from her rock to theirs and settled in between them. "Yep. They used to work for the sidhe, nabbing kids for the courts, then around the time of the Reformation, they decided to hop worlds and go into business for themselves."

Lisa frowned. "The Reformation?"

"The economy collapsed," Dean said, glad of the chance to once again be the one explaining things, instead of the other way around. "It was a whole big thing."

"The economy?"

"Turns out Fairy Land has politics just like any other place."

"Underhill," Lola growled. "Not 'Fairy Land'." She hopped to her feet. "You two done yapping, or do you need a few more moments?"

"Hey, gimme a break here," Dean protested. "I'm fresh off a fight with a water dragon."

"Knucker." Lola started off with long, languid strides, swinging her arms exaggeratedly as she waited for them to get to their feet.

Dean pushed himself up, testing his knee carefully before starting after her. "What did you call me?"

Lola tilted her head back and roared at the sky, hands flailing in the air. Dean grinned.

"Wow," Lisa said, stepping in close enough for Dean to catch himself on her shoulder when he needed to. "I'm surprised you two haven't killed each other, yet."

They followed the course of the river through the hills, though it was now far below at the base of a respectable gorge, and made it to a modest stone bridge just as the sun's leading edge touched the horizon and the first baying of the Hunt's hounds could be heard in the distance. Lola snapped her head up, her nose twitching, then shooed Dean and Lisa toward the bridge. "Hurry up," she said. "We're almost there."

Dean pushed Lisa along first, looking back over his shoulder at the gathering clouds looming on the darkened horizon. They seemed to bubble forth at an accelerated page, while the howls of the dogs bounced and echoed strangely over the ground behind them. Lisa took a single step onto the bridge, and the thing started to rumble.

" _WHO GOES THERE?_ "

Lisa froze, and Dean spun around again, bringing up the shotgun, but Lola pushed them both forward.

"Not now, Billy!"

" _BUT I --_ " said the voice.

"We're in a hurry!" Lola pushed at Dean's back again, her hands only barely above his ass, muttering all the while. "Bridge trolls. No sense of urgency."

The looming clouds covered a full quarter of the sky now and pressed ever forward, even as the sun dropped further on the other side of the bridge. A blast from a hunting horn joined the noise of the dogs.

" _OH CRAP,_ " said the troll, and the bridge stopped shaking, and Lisa, Dean, and Lola all broke into a run. Dean turned back as they reached the far side. The clouds were coming in low now, and as the sun sent its last rays of the day streaming across the ground, it picked out shapes in the leading edge of the cloud bank.

A line of riders, black as the night sky in the middle of the desert, their heads covered in helmets and hats of bygone eras, bore down on them. The dogs were the size of ponies and could easily double as hellhounds. They ran alongside the riders, dodging in and out and over each other and frothing at the mouth as they howled into the growing wind. The horses were enormous beasts with fiery red eyes, their hooves sending up flashes of lighting as they struck the air. The lead rider, his helmet adorned with the enormous antlers of a giant moose, raised a horn to his lips and blasted out another triumphant call.

"Holy hell," Dean muttered. "It's the goddamn ghost riders in the sky."

Lola and Lisa each grabbed one of his arms and yanked him along.

It was no use. They were running across open ground, with no cover in sight. The river wouldn't pose much of an obstacle to the Hunt, either, unless --

Dean turned as he ran, peering over his shoulder. There were legends about the supernatural and running water. While he'd never seen a river stop a spirit or demon in his own world, the idea had to come from somewhere, and Lola had been trying to get them to cross the bridge before the sun fully set. Maybe, just maybe. . . .

The cloud bank full of hunters slowed as it reached the edges of the river gorge, swooping down to touch the ground. The antlered lead hunter pulled his horse up sideways, coming to a halt, his head turned to face Dean. He raised his hand in a fist, and the other hunters pulled up behind him. Dean stumbled to a stop himself, scarcely daring to breath.

It was working. They wouldn't fly across the water. He and Lisa and Lola were going to make it.

The lead hunter lowered his fist. The horses behind him reared up, then began to swarm to either side of him, carrying their riders two at a time across the stone bridge.

Dean swore, then turned his head forward again to put on a fresh burst of speed, his injured knee all but forgotten as he desperately tried to put distance between himself and the hellish hunters chasing him.

They caught up in moments. Lola let out a shriek and vanished, leaving Dean and Lisa facing off against the stampeding Hunt on their own. Dean raised his shotgun and fired at the nearest hunter, hoping against hope that it would at least make a dent, and was startled to see that the salt rounds sent the figure scattering. The Wild Hunt was made up of ghosts. Ghosts that responded to salt just the way ghosts always had. He shot another, then cracked the gun open and grabbed for Lisa's bag.

"Ammo!" he shouted. "We need to hold them off!"

Lisa nodded back, digging furiously through her bag with one hand, even as she waved her golf club threateningly at one of the dogs.

Dean winced. "That's not real iron!"

"Oh sure," Lisa shouted back. "Tell them that!"

Dean was pretty sure the dog could probably tell. It lunged for Lisa, and Dean shoved her out of the way, dropping both of them to the ground. The dog sailed overhead and landed several feet away, then turned in an instant to come back at them.

One of the horses pounded in front of it, blocking the way. Dean braced himself for whatever the rider would throw at them, then was startled to note that the rider, his face covered by a thick, voluminous hood, had his head turned away, toward the rest of the hunt still making their way across the bridge. He circled Dean and Lisa, continuing to block the paths of the dogs, and was joined a moment later by a second rider, this one with long, faintly curled hair hiding that flashed silver in the fading twilight and hid her face from view. Between the two, they formed a tight circle, holding the entire rest of the Hunt at bay. Lisa handed Dean the salt rounds, but he hesitated as he loaded them into the gun, staring up at the two riders. Somehow, he got the feeling that they weren't claiming the two humans for the Hunt leader. The rider with the long hair raised a bow and fired an arrow into the nearest hound. The one in the hood turned his head inwards, and though his face remained in shadow, Dean realized he recognized it.

"Hold onto each other and close your eyes," the rider said. "Whatever you do, don't open them until the Hunt is gone."

Dean shot a glance back at the long-haired rider, still firing shots into the pack of slathering dogs, then stared back at the first rider, dumbfounded. "What --"

" _Now_ , Dean!"

Dean swallowed, then spun in place and grabbed onto Lisa, pulling her tight against his chest. He ducked his head into her hair and squeezed his eyes shut.

He'd always had trouble refusing that voice.

The baying of dogs and calls of horns and crashes of weaponry swirled around them like physical things, tugging at Dean's hands against Lisa's cloak and pressing against his eyes. Someone screamed, a high, angry, agonized sound that dug its way into Dean's soul and ripped at it until he felt all of four years old again. He gripped Lisa tighter, and though it took every ounce of his will, he refused to open his eyes. The scream drowned out the sounds of the Hunt and seemed to sweep under and around Dean and Lisa, lifting them bodily from the ground and throwing them, tumbling them through the air, and still, Dean refused to open his eyes. His stomach turned and sunk and for a long moment, Dean was convinced he was falling, spiraling deep down, back into Hell itself, but he kept his eyes squeezed firmly shut.

And then, suddenly, it ended.

Dean didn't feel them land, just noticed the ground was once more solid beneath him. He didn't hear the scream end, just realized that the world had gone quiet. Lisa shook in his grip, her hands clenched tight on his shoulders. One of her nails slipped into one of Black Annis' scratches, and Dean hissed, his eyes flicking open.

They were still in a rocky field, but the bridge and the river were nowhere in sight. More importantly, neither was the Hunt, or any sign of the two riders who'd helped them. Dean drew in a shaking breath, tilting his head up toward the starry night sky, and felt his eyes prickle.

It was some kind of trick. It had to be. That was what fairies did, they took on familiar forms to fool you, to win your trust.

But those two riders had helped them. Had led the Hunt away, or carried Dean and Lisa to safety, or _something_. And Dean couldn't figure out why they would do that if they were just taking on forms.

Lisa still clung to him, her face pressed against his chest. "Is it over?"

He patted her gently, then eased back. "Yeah. I think it is." He looked down at her, taking a moment to marvel how she looked, circled in his arms. He'd gotten this every day for a year, and had given it up for terror, pain, and death. For a Sam who wasn't the Sam Dean knew, just a soulless copy going through the motions.

And Dean knew, given the chance, he'd make that same choice again.

Every time.

Lisa pulled out of his grip, looking around, and the moment broke. She pushed her hair back off her face and gave him a sidelong look. "Who were they? How did you know you could trust them?"

Dean heaved a breath, holding his eyes wide as he fought back the tears that kept trying to well up behind his lids, and started looking around to see how much of their supplies had made the trip with them. He'd managed to keep a grip on the shotgun, and Lisa's bag, though looking somewhat lighter, was still hanging over her shoulder. They'd lucked out on that one -- he didn't think either of them had been paying enough attention to make sure they brought anything with them. "Because," he said at length, his voice catching as he tried to draw the breath to say it. He pressed his hand against his face, rubbing from his eyes down past his mouth. "Those were my parents."

*

After the tour ended, the hunters headed out, though not before the docent gave Sam her phone number. Lisa's neighborhood had a decided lack of greasy spoon diners, but they did manage to find a coffee shop with free wifi tucked into a strip mall between a "Christian Family Store" and a GNC. Sam ordered something froofy -- it was good to know that some things about the kid hadn't changed -- and opened up his laptop.

"Meredith confirmed what I found out last night," he said.

"And you couldn't have told us all that _before_ we shelled out for a tour?" Rufus grumbled.

"It was only five dollars," Sam answered. "And the website didn't show the garden itself. I'll check the genealogy later, see if Mary Francis had any fairies in her family history closet."

"That many fairy plants can't be a coincidence," Bobby said, taking a sip of his coffee. "And the timeline sure as hell lines up."

"So no one actually summoned them, this time," Sam said. "That might make the banishing more difficult."

"You've been here a while, now, Sam," said Rufus. "These suckers were averaging a kid every two days. You seen any more go missing?"

Sam shook his head. "Not since Lisa. She went a couple hours after Dean."

"Huh," said Rufus. "So maybe they're done. You said it was likely a trap for your brother."

"What about the each uisge?" Bobby asked. "That didn't seem too 'done' to me."

"They aren't known for abductions, though. It mighta followed the others through."

"It wouldn't be alone, either." Sam turned his laptop so Bobby and Rufus could see. "There've been incidents of vandalism and robberies all over town. Local neighborhood watch is on alert. Looks like they're blaming the missing kids."

"Idjits," Bobby grumbled. "Could be fairy tricks."

"There's also a local woman who said she found a winning lotto ticket in the street. She turned in a primrose. And here's a guy who swears that a stray dog talked to him, but he might just be crazy."

"So the fairies are running amuck," Rufus said. "We may have our work cut out for us, here."

"I've got a spell that'll clear all this up." Sam cast a sidelong glance at Bobby.

Bobby wanted to reach across the table and smack him upside the head. "We gotta give Dean the chance to get the kids back, first."

"How long are we going to wait?" Sam closed his laptop with a little more force than usual. "Time works differently over there. A day for Dean could be weeks for us."

"Works the other way, too, from what I've read," said Rufus. "He coulda been there a hundred years by now."

"Exactly," said Sam. "We don't even know if Dean can come back, much less with the kids."

"Dammit, Sam," said Bobby. "I didn't know better, I'd say you were hoping Dean doesn't come back."

Sam gave him a hard look. "But you do. Look, maybe I don't really like Dean, now. But I don't not like him, either, and I think I need him. That's why I got him back into hunting in the first place. But we can't wait around here forever. The fairies could be stepping up their game as we speak."

"It's been three days, Sam, I'm thinking we can wait a little longer!" Bobby really did want to reach across the table, now, to throttle some sense into the kid.

"Ladies!" Rufus slapped both hands down on the table. "You two gonna keep up this little tiff all day, or are you gonna let a guy in on your little gossip circle? Since when was Dean not hunting?"

Bobby sighed, and Sam crossed his arms over the table top. "Dean got out. Lived with the Braedens for a whole year, had a 'respectable' job, the whole deal."

"Seriously?" Rufus blinked. "Well hell. Good for him."

"It couldn't last," Sam said. "We gave him as long as we could, but I needed his help."

"That why you don't like him? 'Cause he ditched you?"

"No."

"And why are you so chipper?" Rufus was on a roll, now. "Near as I can tell, you haven't gotten a wink of sleep since I got here, and you ain't even wearing dark circles."

Sam glanced at Bobby. Bobby stared back and gave him a little shrug.

"Oh, we are not doing this," said Rufus. "Something going on with a hunter I'm working with is something I definitely need to know." He narrowed his eyes at Bobby. "We don't need another Omaha."

Bobby flinched, flashing Sam an apologetic look. "You know the boys stopped the apocalypse," he said. "They didn't do it without . . . consequences."

Sam cut right to the chase. "I don't have a soul."

Rufus blinked, his mouth opening and closing a few times as he processed that little tidbit. "Right," he said finally. "I hate when that happens."

They sat in silence a moment longer, sipping their coffee, Rufus openly studying Sam.

"So we're in a holding pattern," Bobby said at last. "I say we play damage control while we wait."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Sam asked. "We can't even see the fairies unless they want us to."

"Not necessarily." Rufus stood. "I got something in my truck that might help." He turned to leave the shop without looking back. Bobby and Sam exchanged a look and followed.

By the time they got to the truck in the crowded parking lot, Rufus was pulling something from a lock box in the cab, strapping it around his head. "Had this for years," he said. "Was starting to think I'd never use it." He reached up to a flat, ring-shaped stone set into a flexible frame attached to the strap and lowered it down so it centered over his right eye.

"You look like a fool," Bobby told him.

"But I'll be able to see what doesn't want to be seen," said Rufus, tapping the stone.

"A fool with purpose, then. But still a fool."

Rufus snorted. "You're just jealous."

"Sure, Rufus. I'm jealous."

*

The night was dark, lacking the bright moonlight that Dean remembered outside the sidhe castle. They had no idea where they needed to go next, so Dean led the way, limping heavily now, down into a shallow valley between the hills. The rocks here were larger than they'd been near the bridge, some forming long, flat tables in the ground, others rising up into tiny ridges that Dean scrambled over, occasionally bracing himself with the shotgun. He spotted what looked like a shallow cave nestled into the hill at the base of the valley and glanced back at Lisa, gesturing to it with a tilt of his head. She nodded, and he took her hand as they started for it at jog.

The cave wasn't a natural formation -- or wouldn't be, in the real world -- but it'd clearly been there a long time. The standing stones forming the sides were sunk deep into the ground, the cap practically welded on to form a slanted table. The details were hard to make out in the dark, but Dean couldn't see any signs of life, so he slid down to sit against one of the sides, just under the edge of the overhang. Lisa released his hand and reached up, running her fingers along the edge of the capstone, her hood falling back as she tilted her head up to look.

"I think this might be a dolmen," she said. Dean leaned his head back against the stone wall and shrugged. He was more tired than he could remember being in a long, long time.

"That's a fairy thing, right?"

Lisa lowered her hand and brushed her fingers against her jeans. "Maybe? They're said to be tombs, but no one really knows for sure."

"You really are a nerd."

Lisa kicked a cloud of dirt at him. Dean winced, raising one hand to shield his eyes.

She settled down next to him a moment later, resting her bag in her lap, then reached out to rub his thigh.

"Hey," she said. "They saved us."

Dean swallowed. He might have known she'd cut right to the topic he was trying to avoid thinking about. "They shouldn't even be here."

"It's better than the alternative, right? From what you've said, Heaven doesn't really sound all that great."

Dean put his head in his hands and huffed a breath. At least in Heaven, they'd be surrounded by something happy. Fake, maybe, but happy. "Fairy Land."

"Fairies have always been connected with the dead. The Wild Hunt especially. Lots of legendary figures and heroes have been said to be part of it."

Dean shot her a skeptical look and she snorted.

"Look it up if you don't believe me. I think in some places, they say Sir Francis Drake leads the thing."

"You stopped being into this stuff in high school," Dean said.

"I kinda took it up again. After the changelings."

Dean nodded, and they fell silent again. Lisa leaned her shoulder against his, and Dean was tempted to put his arm over her shoulder, but wasn't sure if she'd take it the right way. It was strange to think he used to do those sorts of things without question, that he'd had this person in his life he could be physically affectionate with other than Sam. It was stranger still to realize how much he missed it. How much he'd lost, and how quickly. How much he still stood to lose, if anything happened to Lisa or Ben while they were here.

He had to face the fact that they might not get out of this. It was easier not to think about, when they were hiking or fighting water dragons or being chased by the Wild Hunt, but the pear still hung over his head, and there was no telling what, if anything, Ben had eaten. The longer it took to find the kid, the less likely it was that they'd be able to get back out.

Part of him, he realized, was even hoping for it. An ultimate way out of the hunting life without having to die first. He tried to picture it, riding out with the hunt, alongside his mom and dad, chasing storms across the Fairy Land plains, Ben playing with the flying dogs -- Ben wanted a dog, right? Kids always wanted dogs. The demons couldn't touch him here. He wouldn't be working for Crowley, wouldn't have to worry about Samuel, and Sam --

Sam would be soulless, left behind in a world overrun with monsters.

Dean shivered, and Lisa edged closer.

"We could start a fire," she said. Dean shook his head.

"Too visible. The Hunt's probably still looking for us." For him, at least. Lisa might not have made their radar, if she hadn't joined up with him and Lola. Hell, he'd brought all of this down on her. He was pretty sure the fairies had come to Lisa's town because of him. There'd been talk of a bounty when he'd been taken, and Dean had a feeling it was a rare person who managed to get back to the real world after the fairies had dug their claws into them. He never should have gone back to her. "I'm sorry."

Lisa bumped her shoulder into his, a little harder than necessary for a friendly gesture. "Don't be an idiot."

Dean snorted, trying for humor and not quite getting there. "No, that'd be you, showing up here."

Lisa pulled back at that, shifting around so she was facing him. "Are you kidding me?"

Dean looked back steadily, not willing to back down. "You're not a hunter, Lisa. And I can't guarantee I can protect you, here."

"Who saved whom from a water dragon, today?"

"With a golf club." Dean shook his head. "You got lucky, Lisa. Not that I don't appreciate --"

Lisa cut him off by putting her hand over his mouth. She leaned in close, her eyes hard. "Listen to me, Dean. Ben is _my son_. If you thought for one moment that I was going to just sit at home and wait for you to bring him back again, then you really are an idiot."

Dean jerked out from under her hand, glaring back. "Dammit, Lisa --"

" _No._ " Lisa sat back, crossing her arms. "No lectures. I'm here, okay? And I'm not leaving without Ben."

Dean bit back a groan. He should have known that. Maybe she could help Ben with the Hunt's dogs. "Don't get killed."

"Same to you," Lisa said, and when Dean frowned, she continued. "I don't want to think what it'd do to Ben if you died. Especially while trying to save him."

Dean shook his head. "He's a strong kid. He'd be fine."

"No, he wouldn't." Lisa ducked her head, leaning in to meet Dean's eye. "He idolizes you, Dean. You're his hero."

"I'm not fit to be anybody's hero."

"Not arguing," Lisa said. "But that's the thing with kids. They're not that great at being reasonable."

They fell silent again at that, and for awhile they just sat. Lisa leaned her head back against the dolmen. Dean rubbed his sore knee and listened to the sound of her breathing. They'd done this a lot in the year Sam was gone, sitting together without words, just letting time go and enjoying the other's company, mostly because Dean never knew what to say. He had no talent for small talk, had never spent more than a few days in anyone's company but Sam's or his dad's. It'd taken time, but Dean had eventually grown to understand that silences with Lisa didn't have to be tense. She understood the words he left unsaid, and she didn't judge him for it.

That was before, though. Before Sam had stood by and watched him get turned by vampires. Before Dean had ruined everything with his need to come back and say one last good-bye. He didn't know why he thought he'd get one. The universe wasn't that kind to Winchesters, or anyone they claimed as their own.

Claimed. What had Lola said? _"Do you claim him as your own?"_ Not did he love Ben, did he _claim_ him.

Huh.

The night wore on with a silence that settled thick around them, cold and damp and filling up with a whirlpool of all the things Dean would never be able to explain. The pear, and claiming. Ben and Sam and his father on horseback. His mother's silver hair blowing in the breeze. The way the howling of hounds had pierced into something deep and dark inside him, or the way he could feel the heat of Lisa's body next to him, even when they weren't touching. The love and pride at seeing her standing tall by the river, the hurt and longing he'd felt when he was away from her, traveling with the stranger who called himself his brother.

Or maybe that was just the mist. It rose up as the night wore on, creeping along through the valley, hinting at a river or a creek not too far off. Dean's jaw clenched and he drew his legs up closer to his body.

"C'mere," Lisa said, her voice soft and all but swallowed up by the mist. She unclasped her cloak and slid it halfway off, holding the end out toward him. "This is wool. Maybe we can't light a fire, but we should still stay warm."

Dean bit his lip on a refusal, figuring it would just set her off again, put even more even more distance between them. Instead he scooted over until his shoulder touched hers, and let her drape it over his shoulders. She pulled the other side tighter around herself. It was nearly large enough to cover them both, and Dean had to admit, he felt a little better with it holding them close. He fingered the hem, sliding the rough, soft fabric over his thumb.

"Where'd you get this thing, anyway?" The texture was familiar, reminding him of long nights in the Impala, miles from the nearest town. "Is this an army blanket?"

Lisa huffed a short laugh. "Yeah. One of my exes made it for me."

"He was a vet?"

"No, just thrifty. He worked renaissance fairs, and saved all his nice fabric for his paying customers."

"Those the places where everyone pretends they're in medieval England?"

"Basically."

"So, you dated a guy who wore tights."

"Not every day. Just when he was working. They showed off his legs. And other bits."

Dean shook his head, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips. "How did I not know this?"

"Because I've barely thought about him in years." Lisa scooted an inch or so closer, tilting her head to rest against Dean's, and pulled the cloak tighter around them. "You didn't want to hear about my exes, anyway."

"I liked hearing about the boring one." Mostly because it was one of the few things that made Dean feel better about being a bit of a mess. He drank, sure, and had nightmares and sometimes frightened both Lisa and Ben, even before Sam had come back, but at least he wasn't boring. "Seriously, though. All this -- the fairy lore, the fact that you own a cloak -- It shouldn't be such a surprise."

Lisa tilted her head, and Dean could hear the soft scrape of her hair against his. "We never talked much about me. You usually had other things on your mind."

Dean's stomach sank. It was true. All that time, he'd never asked about Lisa's life. He'd kept up with Ben, had known everything the kid had going on, but he'd probably known more about Sid than he did about Lisa. "So much for the best year of your life."

Lisa sat up, pulling a bit of the cloak along with her. "Yeah, well. Sometimes people say stupid things, when they want someone to stay."

Fuck. Dean was screwing this up left and right. He should have stuck to silence.

"I'm tired," Lisa said. "We should get some sleep."

Dean nodded. "You sleep. I'll take the first watch." He shrugged out from under the cloak, shifting around until he had a decent view of the top of the valley, and would hopefully be able to see trouble coming. He heard Lisa shuffle some things around behind him and tried not to shiver as the cool mist wrapped around him.

He almost jumped when Lisa dropped the cloak back over him a moment later, pulling the hood up over his head. "Idiot," she muttered, then curled up against his side, her head against his arm, and pulled the corner of the cloak around herself. "Wake me up when you get tired. You need sleep, too." She closed her eyes and hummed, an 'I get the last word' tactic Dean recognized well, and her breathing soon evened out into the soft whispering of a light sleep.

If Dean spent almost as much time looking down at her, almost hidden beneath the cloak, as he did keeping actual watch on the valley outside the dolmen, well. No one but him would ever have to know.

*

By the time the sun hit the horizon, they'd cleared out a nest of nasties harassing people at a gas station, a Lady of the Lake trying to lure kids out of the skating rink, and a gangly, horned beast masquerading as a fancy stereo in the parking lot of a Best Buy that Bobby identified as the Hedley Kow. Rufus' self-bored stone contraption looked ridiculous, but Bobby had to admit it worked.

They were doing one last sweep of the neighborhood in the Impala when Rufus told Sam to stop. He was staring out the windshield, leaning over the back seat, his eyes focused way too high up for Bobby's tastes.

"Spriggans," he said, and he grabbed their last jug of premade holy water and opened his door. Bobby cursed and followed, Sam not far behind.

"Hey ugly!" Rufus shouted, looking up at something at least as tall as the nearest house. "Yeah, that's right, I'm talkin' to you and your buddies. You wanna pick on someone?" He popped the cap on the jug and flung a liberal amount into the air. "Pick on this!"

The water outlined a massive, deformed humanoid shape as the spriggan shrieked, then rapidly shrank down to something closer to the size of a housecat.

This was usually the point where the targeted fairies revealed themselves to Sam and Bobby, but the spriggans seemed to be cannier than that. One of them ran into Bobby's leg and latched on, piercing his jeans with needle-like fingers. Bobby shouted and kicked out to shake it off, but another of the invisible things landed on his back, snatching the hat off his head and biting down on his scalp.

Sam shouted a warning, then flung salt in Bobby's face. He felt the spriggans let go, but they were too many and too spread out for all of them to be distracted. Sam doubled over as he was pounced on from behind. Rufus was in a similar boat, still flinging holy water around as more spriggans took to changing their shape, judging by where he was aiming, ballooning up into house-sized beasts. One of them must have smashed into him, as he flew back into the hood of the Impala and fell to the ground with a groan. Bobby fired a blast of iron shot at the spot where he'd been standing, but couldn't be sure it was a hit. One of the spriggans leaped onto his chest, its claws digging into his shirt. It hissed and giggled in his ear as it counted the salt caught in his collar, digging into his flesh with every grain.

A blast of water hit him, and the spriggan screamed and let go. Bobby looked over to see Gwen Campbell standing in front of a black Dodge Avenger, holding a wicked looking water gun. She pumped it up again with a few, sharp movements, then aimed another blast at something a few feet to Sam's left.

"Turn your coats inside out!" she yelled. "Quickly! It'll repel them!"

Bobby hurried to do so, then ran over to assist Rufus with his. Gwen continued to fire holy water around the street, seemingly at random. Sam flipped his own coat, and after few minutes, Bobby could hear the skittering of footsteps as the spriggans retreated.

Sam smiled at her, brushing his mussed hair off his face. "Gwen," he said. "Where are others?"

Gwen shrugged, her face going hard. "Probably back at the compound. I've gone solo. Kind of hard to fight next to someone when you can't be sure they're not working for demons."

Bobby hissed in sympathy as he tugged Rufus to his feet. He knew how it felt when family suddenly turned evil. "You can see the fairies?" he asked, going for a change of subject. Gwen tossed him a flask.

"Wild thyme tea," she said, as Bobby took a gulp. "It's gone cold, but it still works. I can't believe you're out here hunting them without knowing the basics. You're not rookies."

"Hey." Rufus adjusted his stone, which had been knocked askew when he'd been thrown. "I had it covered."

"There's a lot of lore," said Sam. "We haven't had time to go through it all."

Bobby tossed him the flask, and he drank it down. The whole scene was starting to transform before Bobby's eyes. He could see a smear of blood where he'd managed to hit one of the spriggans with the iron shot.

"Lucky for you I showed up, then," Gwen said. "We don't use it much, but the Campbell kids all get Fairy 101 in their training."

Bobby heard sirens approaching in the distance. "You get Cop 101, too?" he asked. "'Cause I ain't looking forward to explainin' that we were fighting a band of spriggans in the middle of a suburban street."

"Sure," Gwen said. "Rule number one: clear the fuck out."

  


*

Lisa woke Dean at sunrise, and they sat together at the edge of the dolmen, breakfasting on energy bars and bottled water as the sun burned off the top layer of mist. They decided quickly that Dean knew the most about the most about the sidhe compound where Ben was likely being held. Not that that was much, but he thought he could at least retrace the path of his and Lola's run and get them to the dungeons. That was assuming they could find the right door, or the castle itself, which Dean wasn't sure about, other than "it's somewhere maybe near the river". Lisa, it turned out, had been looking for it since she'd arrived, through something she called a "fairy ring", which had landed her deep in the forest by the river. Apparently, since she didn't fit the abduction profile, she'd instead laid an offering of flowers to request passage, and had gotten her answer from something that only gave her the vaguest of directions. She'd been relying on the word of the occasional woodland fairy to get as far as she had.

"I tried to ask a fish," she said, "but all I got were riddles."

Dean didn't ask how she knew about the fish.

When the sun had fully risen above the horizon they set out, climbing the hill behind the dolmen. Dean's knee had stiffened up overnight and his progress was slow. He wished Lisa had managed to keep hold of the golf club when they were whisked off away from the Hunt. It might have made for a decent walking stick. As it was, he had to rely far more than he liked on her offers of a hand or shoulder while he waited for the painkillers to kick in. He wasn't looking forward to the inevitable battle at the sidhe castle. Still, he'd fought with worse than a bruised and swollen knee.

The temperature rose faster than the sun itself, and Dean pulled off his overshirt as they crested the hill. His clothes had stiffened up as much as his knee had, thanks to the drenching in the river, and they were starting to itch. He glanced over at Lisa, who once again had her cloak around her, the hood pulled up. "Aren't you hot in that thing?"

Lisa shrugged. "Keeps the sun off my face," she said. "Besides, it gives me a little credibility, you know?" She struck a pose, the cloak billowing in a light breeze. "The mysterious wandering hero."

"You really are a nerd."

Lisa smiled. "Guess so."

"It's kind of sexy, though," Dean mused. "You could put your hair up, maybe get some glasses --"

"Dean." Lisa stopped walking, putting her hand up.

"Come on," Dean said. "Librarians are in." Then he stopped as well, spotting movement in the grass. He tightened his grip around his shotgun, crouching slightly as he squinted to find the source.

A long, pointed nose popped up over the edge of a rock, testing the air, followed by a thick, ambling body, covered from ears to ass in a pelt of dark brown quills. It looked like a midget porcupine, but as it drew closer, Dean realized that the quills were familiar.

"Lola?" he called. The thing's ears, ragged, round little things, pricked up. Its body, longer than it first appeared, began to stretch and undulate, growing larger with each movement. Its paws flexed into long fingered hands, and its legs grew out into humanoid limbs, spontaneously clothed in bronze-waxed denim and a fuzzy green top. Lola stood as the transformation finished, staring at Dean and Lisa with wide black eyes.

"Groucho!" she said. "Hero! You're alive!" She spread her arms, and Dean stepped back, hoping she wasn't thinking of hugging him.

"No thanks to you," Dean said. "What the hell's with the vanishing trick, Lola?" He caught sight of Lisa folding her arms in his peripheral vision, and knew she wanted to know, too.

Lola cringed, her spiky hair rising defensively. "Sorry. I panicked. If the Hunt found out I'd helped you. . . ." She trailed off and shrugged sheepishly. "I know, they'd be dumb not to know, but we're not ready yet. If the sidhe come at us, we'll all be killed."

Lisa dropped her arms with a frown. "We?"

"The Resistance." Lola straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, and as short as she was, she almost managed to look formidable. "Come on," she said. "I'll show you. The village is just past the next ridge."

Dean didn't know what he expected the fairy village to look like -- maybe a bunch of giant mushroom houses, all red with white spots -- but the rather modern looking collection of buildings in a mix of wood and brick, arranged down a cobblestone street wasn't it. It looked like any one of the small towns he'd driven through all over America, barring the lack of asphalt, cars or advertisements. There was the local diner, with a line of wooden cafe tables out front. There was the bland, imposing storefront of what he guessed must be a fairy police station. He couldn't help but wonder what counted as a jailable crime in Fairy Land. He had no desire to get locked up again, especially not for something he had no idea was against the rules.

Lola stopped in front of what looked like a florist or garden store, its windows filled with a riot of blooms and small, potted trees, then led them around the side to a loading dock made of what looked like a single slab of the same stone that dotted the fields they'd walked through that morning.

She pounded on the door with the side of her fist. "Hey!" she called. "I'm back!"

"Already? I thought for sure you'd be out there for hours --" The door swung open and Dean felt his jaw drop. The woman standing on the other side was absolutely stunning, standing nearly as tall as Dean, with deep red hair falling in loose curls over both shoulders. Her gathered, sleeveless top draped gloriously over an absolutely phenomenal chest, and her jeans clung perfectly to her legs, stirring something entirely inappropriate below Dean's stomach. He felt Lisa stiffen next to him as the woman turned to look at the two of them, one well-defined eyebrow rising. "Well," she said. "Davie was right. Who knew?"

"Davie said he spotted some humans in the fields last night," Lola explained. "But he says stuff like that every other week." She grinned up at the woman in the doorway, looking inordinately proud of herself. "Guys, this is --"

"Rita Hayworth," Lisa said, her voice filled with a sort of skeptical awe. The woman in the door smirked.

"Sure," she said. "I was going to go with Maud, but Rita works." She stepped to one side, gesturing into the hallway behind her with one beautifully manicured hand. Lola led the way in with Lisa not far behind. Dean couldn't help but linger briefly as he passed Rita. She smelled as good as she looked, something flowery with a hint of musk underneath that set his head spinning.

"Hey," he said, flashing his best ladykiller smile. She ran her fingers over his arm and smiled back.

"Sorry honey," she said. "You're not my type." And she gently pushed him the rest of the way into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind them.

Dean shook himself, then turned away to see Lisa watching him, a faint smirk curling her lips.

The hallway led to what looked like the backroom of the shop, but Lola took them through another door before they got that far, opening it to reveal a long staircase spiraling down into the basement. Dean had never been a big fan of basements as a general rule -- they tended to be favorite hideouts of any number of creepy-ass monsters -- but Lisa headed down after Lola without pausing and Rita blocked the way out, so Dean followed after. He kept a tight grip on his shotgun as they went, readying himself for anything that might be lurking at the bottom of the stairs.

What was waiting turned out to be a small, black, three-horned sheep which bounced excitedly when it spotted them, baaing, and ducking down on its front legs like a dog getting ready to play. "Kilda," Lola said. "Down." The sheep dropped its butt obediently to the wood floor. Lola scooped it up and held it to her shoulder like a cat, waving them the rest of the way in.

Dean might have been surprised by the basement apartment if he hadn't already seen the village. The small main room boasted a shabby looking couch and coffee table, with a breakfast bar looking into the kitchen at the far end, next to a hallway leading away. Where a human living room might have had a television was instead an enormous mirror, carefully shined and framed in gold. It was by far the most expensive-looking thing in the place, and Dean wondered if Lola and Rita just liked staring at themselves that much, or if it had some other significance.

Rita gestured to the couch, encouraging Dean and Lisa to take a seat. "Sorry about the mess," she said. "Lola said she'd find you, but I really wasn't expecting guests."

"Ye of little faith," Lola said, perching on a stool at the breakfast bar and dropping her sheep into her lap. When sitting, the thing's head nearly blocked hers from sight.

"It's fine," said Lisa, more accustomed than Dean to exchanging pleasantries. "It's a lovely home. Very cozy."

Rita smiled. "And here I always thought humans were more honest than fae."

"Did not," said Lola. Rita shot her an amused glance.

"So," she said, looking back to Lisa and Dean. "How exactly did you two escape the hunt?"

Lisa looked over at Dean, letting him know she'd follow his lead. Dean leaned forward and spread his hands. "Oh, you know. Just got lucky."

Rita nodded slowly. "Very. They're not known for losing game."

"And I'm guessing the sidhe aren't known for losing prisoners," Dean said.

"Definitely not," said Rita. "You've been lucky on several counts." Lola cleared her throat, and Rita went on, her polite smile turning a little smug. "Of course, you had a bit of help along the way."

"Lola's been great," Lisa said. "But we don't want to take up any more of your time."

"If you could just point us at the castle," Dean added, "that'd be great."

Lola gave an affronted snort, drawing an annoyed "baa" from her sheep. "Please," she said. "What, are you going to rush the place, just the two of you?"

Dean's jaw clenched at her tone, but he made an effort to keep his own pleasant. What came out was maybe a touch too sweet. He was still a little annoyed at the way Lola tended to vanish when things started attacking. "We don't want to owe any more favors."

Lola stuck her tongue out at him. So did her sheep.

"We're in luck," said Rita. Dean couldn't be certain, but he thought maybe her eye-teeth were fanged. "We were hoping to ask a favor of _you_.."

Dean shot a glance at Lisa, who had her head tilted thoughtfully. "You mean the Resistance," he guessed. Lola flashed him a hopeful grin.

"Yes," said Rita. "A pair of human heroes, the first Underhill's seen in centuries, come to rescue their helpless child. . . ." She trailed off, her hands clenched between her breasts, her eyes tearing. Dean found himself virtually welling with sympathy and passion, along with the urge to maybe give a rallying speech -- then Rita dropped her hands and smiled, and the feeling ebbed. "Well," she said. "It couldn't help but gain us support amongst the fence-sitters."

Lola's grin grew maybe three shades brighter. Even the sheep seemed expectant.

"And," Rita concluded, "You'd have a veritable army of angry fae behind you when you went to the castle. The sidhe are strong, but they can't stand against all of us."

"We'll do it," Lisa said, then, when Dean stared at her: "I mean, I will."

Dean narrowed his eyes, holding Lisa's gaze. "Could we maybe get a moment?" he said. "Hero and I need to talk."

"Of course," Rita said, and she fairly glided toward the hallway past the kitchen, brushing her hand down Lola's arm as she went past. When Lola hesitated to follow, Rita reached her hand back up and grabbed her by the ear. "They need a moment, _darling_."

"Okay, okay, I'm going." Lola hopped up, still clutching her sheep. Just before she disappeared into the hallway, she turned back, catching Dean's eye. "Please, Groucho," she said softly. Dean found himself sitting up straighter. "You could be a hero, too."

Dean shook himself once she was gone, wondering when exactly Lola had wormed her way so deep under his skin. He turned back to Lisa, who was worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

"What the hell?" he asked. "You really that keen on becoming the poster-woman for someone else's revolution?"

Lisa folded her arms over her chest, turning on the couch so she was facing him. "No. I'm not even sure why they need one. But I'm not seeing a lot of other options, here."

"Well, there's the one where we go it alone."

"You really think that would work? You and me, with one shotgun, against an army of the most powerful fae around?" Lisa rolled her eyes. "Tell me, what do those odds sound like to you?"

"Better than trusting a bunch of strangers." Dean pushed himself to his feet, wincing as the action pulled something in his knee. He limped in a circle around the coffee table, unable to keep himself still. "I've tried that route before. It doesn't turn out well."

"You seemed to trust Lola well enough before."

"And maybe I shouldn't've!" Dean threw his arms up, then ran them over his hair. "These people -- they're not even human."

"But she's helped you. She got you out of the sidhe dungeons, when it has to mean nothing but trouble for her."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure about that." Dean started pacing again, around and around the coffee table, and wished the little basement apartment were bigger. At this rate, he was just going to make himself dizzy. "I mean, what do we even know about her? She's a pixie. She changes shape. She has a sheep and a hot roommate, she doesn't like the sidhe, and she used to be a mom."

Lisa frowned. "She did?"

Dean shrugged. "That's what she said. I didn't press for details."

Lisa pulled her legs in, hugging her knees to her chest. "Used to be?" she asked, her voice soft. "Do you think -- it must have been the sidhe. That must be why she's so angry."

"She doesn't seem all that angry to me."

"She is," Lisa said. "Trust me." Dean shrugged, figuring it must be some kind of motherly instinct or something.

"You, I trust." Dean sat back down, on the coffee table this time, pressing his hands against his face. "I always have." Lisa was quiet then, and Dean couldn't bring himself to look up and see the expression on her face. Things had been so weird between them since Sam let Dean get turned. He wanted to go over to her, pull her into his arms, and let her hold him up the way she had every day for a year, but it wasn't his place to try, any more. "I know this doesn't change anything," he said. "I know that doesn't go both ways. But I don't think you want to trust a bunch of fairies, either."

"I don't." Lisa kept her voice low. "But, Dean, this could be our only real chance to find Ben."

Dean nodded, then looked up when she gasped. She wasn't looking at him anymore, but was staring past him over his shoulder. He twisted in his seat to follow her gaze, then felt his eyes go wide.

The mirror took up the whole wall behind him, aimed back at the couch where Lisa was sitting. But it wasn't reflecting the room, any more. It had gone cloudy, like it was a window into a wall of roiling mist. Dean caught occasional flashes of faces, rising up suddenly out of the mist, only to fade back again just as quickly. "The hell?" He stood and walked over to it, stopping just before he pressed his hand against the glass. Lisa came over to join him.

"It started when I said we needed to find Ben," she said, and the mist reacted, rushing faster, pulling up face after face as Dean and Lisa watched.

"It's a magic mirror," Lola said from behind them. She'd left her sheep behind in another part of the apartment and now stood, her hands held awkwardly at her sides, in the entrance to the hallway. "You tell it what you want to see, and it shows it to you."

Dean scowled. "You were listening in," he said.

Lola shrugged. "Yeah." She looked at Lisa, tilting her chin up. "You're right. About the sidhe. They took my son, too." She walked over, taking her place between Dean and Lisa, and faced the mirror. "Show me Morcum."

The mist flashed a bright white and settled, clearing away to show the living room behind them, as though Dean, Lisa, and Lola weren't standing right there. Dean looked closer, and noticed the couch had been replaced by a just as shabby chaise lounge. A laugh drifted out, muffled by the glass, and a toddler, dressed in an old fashioned white gown, came running out of the hallway by the kitchen, a broad smile on his face. He had a long, pointed nose, much like Lola's, but where she had quills, he had fluffy blonde hair, standing straight up and failing to hide the long sweep of his pointed ears. He fell to his knees in the middle of the room, tripping over his own toes, and let out another howl of laughter before flopping over onto his back. Lola, looking much the way she did now only dressed in a long skirt, came out after him, cooing and chittering through her teeth, hands outstretched and poised to tickle. The Lola next to Dean sighed.

"That's him," she said. "That's my boy." She tapped the glass with one fingernail, and the scene shifted, this time to a grown man, walking through the valley where Dean and Lisa had spent the night. "He's a halfling, part pixie, part sidhe, born just before the Reformation." Dean blinked, realizing that Lola was far older than he might have guessed. He wondered what the average life span was for a pixie. "When Morcum was of age, they were just beginning to put together the first mixed expeditions, Seelie and Unseelie, to go out into the human world and gather souls." She took a deep, shaky breath, tapped the glass again, and stepped back. "He decided to go with them."

The scene in the mirror dissolved into mist.

"We need a revolution," Lola said. "The sidhe don't just take the humans."

Lisa shot a look at Dean, waiting for him to meet her gaze, then looked back at Lola.

"I'm sorry," she said. She opened her mouth as if to continue, then shut it again. Lola offered her a wan smile.

"Yeah. Me too." She nodded to the mirror. "You can give it a shot, if you want to see your boy. But the sidhe castle's well protected. We usually can't get a clear picture in there. That's why it was so confused, before."

Lisa sighed, reaching up to run her fingers over the mirror's surface. Dean looked back at Lola.

"Is it just this world?" he asked. "Or can it see into the human world, too?"

"It works best with Underhill," she said. "But if you've got a real strong connection, you can probably get a look back home."

Dean nodded, turning back to the mirror. "Show me my brother."

Lisa pulled her fingers away, and the mist swirled into a bright whirlpool of color, shifting from green to blue to brown to red and back again before finally settling down again, looking through a window at Lisa's house, into the dining room. Sam sat at the table, his hands folded over an old hardcover book, looking across at Bobby and Rufus.

Dean swallowed. "Oh, come _on_."

Gwen Campbell sat on Sam's left, field stripping Dean's 1911.

Lisa frowned. "Who is that?"

"Technically?" Dean sighed. "She's my cousin." He glanced back at Lola. "You mind?"

Lola shook her head, raising her hands. "Take your time," she said, turning to head back down the hall. "Give a shout when you're ready. I'll make sure Rita doesn't have her ear pressed to the door."

Dean nodded, his eyes drawn straight back to the mirror and the image of his family and friends. Lisa tilted her head, studying the image.

"Bobby Singer's friend doesn't look too happy to see her," she said.

"Yeah, well," Dean said. "I always knew I liked Rufus."

Indeed, Rufus was giving Gwen his best withering look. Dean couldn't quite make out what any of them were saying. "How do you turn the volume up on this thing?"

A little graphic appeared on the bottom of the mirror, a series of dashes and vertical hash marks, with a minus sign on the left end and a plus on the right.

"Well," said Dean. "That's handy." He tapped at the plus sign, and the sound coming through the mirror grew louder, though there was still some distortion underlying the words.

"So," Rufus was saying. "You're a Campbell."

Gwen flashed him a smirk. "That's what I said."

Rufus looked at Sam. "And she's your cousin?"

"Second," said Sam. He looked at Gwen. "Maybe a couple times removed?"

"That's Mark," Gwen said.

"Right." Sam looked back at Rufus. "Second cousin."

Bobby leaned back in his chair. "What're you getting at here, Rufus?"

"I'm just clarifying," Rufus said. "See, 'cause as far as I can tell, that means Sam and Dean are part of the big happy Campbell clan. So you're from Samuel's stock?"

"He's our grandfather," Sam said. "On Mom's side."

Rufus' eyebrows shot up. "Grandkids to the clan leader himself."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Gwen said. She finished stripping the colt and started fitting it back together.

"Oh, no offense," said Rufus. "Just that you lot are the most sanctimonious, uptight group of hunters I've ever come across. Walking around like you're some kind of hunting royalty. Thing is, near as I can tell, that makes Sam and Dean here the heirs to the Campbell throne."

Gwen stiffened, and Dean realized Rufus had struck a nerve. It had never occurred to him how the hierarchy of the Campbell family might work. Samuel had definitely been in charge, but he'd figured Christian was pulling first-mate duty. Sam had just been a grunt. Still, Samuel had been pretty into bloodlines, and Dean's mom was his only child. . . .

Dean slapped his hand down against the mirror, suddenly not wanting to see anything more. The scene in Lisa's dining room flashed out with a bright spark, and the mirror returned to just reflecting what was in front of it. Dean stared into his own eyes, trying to convince himself he was wrong.

"Dean?" asked Lisa. She put her hand tentatively on his arm.

"Holy shit," Dean said. "Lola told me. One of the first things. 'The sidhe nabbed themselves a human prince.'" He turned toward her and swallowed. "What if I'm the prince?"

  
**Chapter Four: _La Résistance_**   


There were no easy answers to that question. Lola clearly hadn't known who the prince was, and even if Rita knew, Dean didn't trust her to give an honest answer. It wasn't as if they could ask the mirror to show them every prince in the world, and if it couldn't get access to wherever Ben was, it sure as hell wouldn't be able to show any royalty the sidhe might be holding on to.

Lisa didn't say so out loud, but Dean knew she doubted it was true. Dean would be the first to admit he wasn't exactly prime prince material. Princes were supposed to be romantic characters, honest and selfless and noble -- it was where the damn term came from, as far as Dean knew. Dean wasn't any of those things. Sure, he had the whole "destined by blood" thing going there for awhile, but Michael-vessel-tude came from John, not Mary, and Dean didn't think there was anyone willing to argue that his father had been royalty.

Though he had, apparently, managed to join the Wild Hunt along with Mary, which, from what Dean could tell, was pretty much reserved for the VIPs of the human world. He tried asking the mirror to show him his parents, but got only another swirl of confused mist in response. Either the Hunt had themselves blocked like the sidhe did, or John and Mary were somewhere far away, well past whatever the mirror's range was. So many things had used their shapes to try and get under his skin, Dean didn't know what to believe.

He was thinking himself around in circles over it all, slouched once more on the couch, when Lisa sat down next to him, resting her hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," she said. "They're still going to need an answer. Do you want to help their resistance?"

Dean groaned under his breath. He didn't want to. He couldn't even explain why, really, other than his natural distrust of large scale battles between nonhuman creatures. He might have been quicker to join up before the angels had entered his life. Or maybe he would have been even more adamant against it. What it really came down to, though, was a simple question. "You're going to do it either way, aren't you?"

"Yes. It's my best chance to get Ben back."

"Lisa." Dean ran his palm over his chin, not quite able to meet her eyes as he spoke. "What if we can't get him back?"

Lisa jerked, her whole body going rigid. The look she gave him was one he'd last seen on his mother's own face some six years and a million miles away, as she faced down the poltergeist holding Sam pinned to a wall. "That's not an option."

Dean nodded slowly. "I'm not going to let you do this alone. I'm in."

Lisa nodded back, a quick jerk of her head, her body still tensed. "Thank you." She turned her head back toward the kitchen. "We're ready!"

Rita and Lola came out immediately, both carrying bundles of clothes. Rita wore a small, enigmatic smile, like she'd known that they'd agree all along. Lola bumped her shoulder gently into Rita's side, grinning like a fool.

"We brought you these," she said, setting the clothes down on the coffee table. "I thought you might want to change. Rita says her clothes should fit you, Hero, and I brought some of Morcum's old things for Groucho."

Lisa smiled back graciously, lifting a tank top off of the top of Rita's pile of clothes. "Thank you. It'll be nice to put on some clean clothes."

Dean fingered Lola's pile, trying not to wrinkle his nose. He had little hope that Lola's son's clothes would fit him, but even if they did, they were light years away from being his style. The kid apparently liked pinstripes, for one, and the button down shirt had turned a soft yellow with age.

"You can change in the back," Rita told Lisa. "Lola put Kilda in her crate, so it's basically sheep-free."

Lisa thanked her again and scooped up the clothes. Rita turned to lead her back, and Lola started to follow.

"Hey," Dean said, reaching out to catch her wrist before she could go far. "Lola. Stay a minute."

Lola stopped, half turning back. Her wrist twitched in his grip, but she didn't try to pull away. "So you like me again, huh?"

Dean didn't know how to respond to that, so he decided not to. He let go of her wrist and spread his hands. "If we're going to do this," he said. "I need to know that what we're getting is the truth."

Lola tilted her head, then moved to perch on the arm of the couch. "I haven't been lying to you," she said.

"That doesn't mean you've told me everything." Dean rubbed his hands together, glancing away toward the mirror, picturing the scene with the toddler, then the man walking out over the field. He looked back. "Brienne," he said softly. "Please."

Lola sucked in a breath. "Oh," she said. "You heard that."

Dean nodded. Lola's shoulders slumped.

"You know my real name," she said. "It's only fair if I get to know yours."

Dean's mouth quirked up. "What, you don't want to keep calling me 'Groucho'?"

"Well, it doesn't really suit you. You're not nearly that funny."

That startled a laugh out of him. "Yeah, but my brother already has dibs on 'Grumpy'." He hadn't thought of Pamela in awhile, and was surprised to find that he could think of her fondly now, though he still winced internally when he thought of how she'd died. He rubbed a hand down his face, weighing the situation. On the one hand, he knew it was dangerous. Lisa had been careful to keep their real names out of conversation when they weren't alone, and all the fairies he'd met here seemed to be running the same nickname game. On the other, he wasn't a big fan of wrenching the truth out of Lola just by virtue of using her name. If they were going into battle together, and everything pointed to the fact that they were, then there needed to be some trust on both sides of the equation.

"I'm Dean," he said finally. Hopefully, she wouldn't get much out of just his first name.

Lola smiled, a real, pleased look rather than one of her manic grins. She looked almost human when she smiled like that.

"Nice to finally meet you, Dean." She folded her legs underneath her, still balanced on the arm of the couch, and settled her hands in her lap. "So. What do you want to know?"

*

As it turned out, Lola -- the name had stuck in Dean's head, and he rather thought she didn't look much like a "Brienne" -- hadn't left much out. Her son was half-pixie, half-sidhe. It was a combination that would have been unheard of in the old days, and the family had been shunned from the Seelie Court when the kid was born. They'd lived peacefully for years in the fairy village before the Reformation, but Morcum had never been truly happy here, and when the Seelie and Unseelie had joined forces, the old taboos of halflings had been set aside in favor of beefing up the ranks of their Earth-bound soldiers. So Morcum, never a fan of the pixie ways, had gone to join them. Lola hadn't heard from him since.

"He doesn't even show in the mirror," she said, staring sadly at the piece as she spoke, gnawing on her thumbnail. "We could follow the early expeditions for awhile, but then the sidhe decided that anyone who wasn't actively working for them had to be against them, and shut off the feed. It became next to impossible for those of us here to get into your world without following sidhe channels. We can get a few folks through every now and then, like when we answered your Hero's call, but it's risky. The sidhe've already taken back control of that gate, and they won't let anyone at it unless they've sworn fealty to the Court. They created a monopoly for themselves. Those of us who want to stay independent have to either make everything ourselves, or wait for whatever the sidhe have decided they don't want any more."

"That's why you were in the castle," Dean guessed. "That's why you were taking my food."

Lola nodded. "There's cracks here and there that us smaller folk can fit through. Usually, the dungeons are just the easy way in. It was pretty surprising to find an actual prisoner in there."

"So the resistance, it's to, what, reopen the pathways to my world?" Dean didn't much like the sound of that.

Lola shrugged, pulling her thumb from her mouth and wiping it on her jeans. "Things are never going to go totally back the way they were. Your people have progressed too much. You don't need brownies or boggles or tommyknockers to help you, you've got, like, vacuum cleaners and sewing machines and fancy air detectors, now."

"You're telling me fairies were maids?"

"Some of us." Dean noticed she'd stopped trying to correct him every time he called them fairies. "It was nice work, if you could get it. Clean up a bit, mend some clothes or furniture or carts, get a nice bowl of cream laid out for you in return. Some fae got real protective of their human households. It wasn't unheard of for a brownie to keep out spirits and demons and things, when they came by. Not all of us were big on stealing babies, you know."

"Right. You liked turning leaves into fake gold."

Lola smiled. "Guilty. But, yeah. It'd be nice to get back to some of the old days. Maybe find a poor family who need a good harvest, willing to spare some milk and honey in return."

"So that's it." Dean couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice. "You guys just want to come and be migrant labor for us."

"Well, maybe bother some sheep."

"Sheep?"

"I like sheep."

"I never would have guessed."

"Have you ever seen an annoyed sheep?" Lola asked. "They're hilarious." She made what Dean guessed was an annoyed sheep face, puffing out her cheeks and crossing her eyes, and burst into laughter.

It was hard to believe she was somebody's mother.

"Anyway." She sat up right, rocking back and forth on her perch on the couch. "You need to get changed. You're starting to smell."

Dean suspected he was more than just _starting_ to smell. He resisted the urge to sniff his own armpit, and instead picked up the clothes she'd brought. Lola bounced up off the couch.

"I'll leave you to that. I really think they'll fit. You're about Morcum's size."

"Right." The top of the pile was a pinstriped vest, looking like something out of a thirties mobster movie. He tried not to scowl visibly. "Thanks."

Lola smiled at him again. Dean realized her quills were lying flatter than he'd ever seen them, sweeping back off her face like dreadlocks. She practically skipped back down the hallway, calling nonsense words at her sheep. Dean turned back to the clothes. He picked at his t-shirt, still stiff with river mud, then looked back at the clothes.

Well. He'd probably worn worse.

*

The pants were about three inches too long in the legs, and the waist pulled uncomfortably tight around his hips, but they were wearable. The shirt smelled like mothballs but closed well enough, though Dean suspected he was a bit broader through the shoulders than Morcum had been. He left off the vest and pulled Bark-Face's boots back on his feet. According to Rita, they still had most of an afternoon to kill before the next meeting of the resistance. She and Lola went upstairs to mind the shop, bickering cheerfully and leaving Dean and Lisa to their own devices in the apartment. Well, Dean, Lisa, and Kilda, who seemed to have quite a fondness for Dean -- or, he suspected, for the person the clothes he was wearing smelled like. Kild climbed up onto the couch next to him and burrowed its head into his lap, nearly goring him with its third horn, and no matter how many times he pushed it away, it kept coming back, until Dean finally gave in and let it stay, absently stroking the coarse wool behind its ears.

There wasn't much to do in the apartment all by themselves. Rita and Lola didn't keep any books around as far as Dean could tell, and no matter how many times he tried asking the mirror to show them _Doctor Sexy_ , it couldn't do more than a vague, lab-coated blob. Dean finally gave up, and for lack of any better ideas, told it to show him Sam again.

Watching hunters try to rid a town of a fairy infestation was surprisingly entertaining, though thoroughly cringe-inducing. They'd worked out some interesting ways to make sure they could see the fairies -- Rufus' had more DIY panache, but Dean had to admit, Gwen's seemed a lot less fiddly. At least until she had to brew a new pot of the stuff, anyway.

Sam kept pausing to flip through a hardcover book he carried with him everywhere. It took Dean a little while to place it, but he finally figured out that it was the book of fairy spells they'd picked up from the old clockmaker. Several times, Sam flipped to one particular page, but a sharp look from Bobby stopped him from using whatever was on it.

"It works," Sam insisted, as Rufus herded a swarm of glowy naked chicks out of a Christian family book store by waving a copy of _Moses' Big Adventure_ at them and shouting about plagues.

"It closes the door, Sam!" Bobby reached out and shut the book himself. "We gotta give Dean more time!"

Dean winced. Lisa stared at him.

"This -- this is why you had me call Bobby," she said, her voice high and soft. "Why you told me not to trust Sam."

Dean swallowed, but didn't respond. In the mirror, Sam found another spell, sending the little Tinkerbells scattering, and the scene followed the group back to the Impala.

"I'm never going to look at that store the same way again," Lisa said, in a clear effort to lighten the mood. Dean was pretty sure she hadn't looked at it much, in the first place.

The mirror seemed to favor certain angles on the action, which Dean realized were all windows or reflective surfaces. One particularly odd moment had shown Sam from the perspective of his gun barrel. That one had made him dizzy enough to demand another angle. Now, as Sam and Gwen climbed into the Impala, they seemed to be looking through the rearview mirror. Sam reached up to adjust it, making the view twitch this way and that, then froze, staring out at them.

After a moment, Dean realized Sam was looking straight at him.

"Dean?" Sam leaned closer to the mirror. "What the hell are you wearing?"

Dean shoved himself up from the couch, dumping Kilda onto the floor, and vaulted over the coffee table to get closer to the mirror. "Sam! You can see me?"

Gwen, now out of the sight line, asked what Sam was doing, and Sam adjusted the mirror again until Gwen was staring into it, too. "Do you see him?" Sam asked. Gwen's mouth tightened.

"It's gotta be some kind of trick," she said. Dean scowled at her.

"Hey Gwen," he said. "You wanna tell me what the hell you were doing with my gun earlier?"

Sam and Gwen both frowned, then Sam's brows went up. "Two days ago," he said. "Time's kind of screwy, there." Gwen nodded.

"I was just cleaning it, Dean. It got all mucked up when you dropped it in the park. Don't worry. I know not to mess with a man's piece."

Damn straight. Dean lifted his chin in somewhat reluctant acknowledgement. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Gwen shot a glance at Sam, then looked back. "So, how the hell are you in the rearview mirror?"

"Magic mirror on this side. It's a long story."

Lisa came up next to Dean and waved. Sam's hand twitched in return.

"So that's where you went. We had a theory."

"Yeah, what the hell is up with that, Sam?" Dean wished his brother was actually in front of him, so he could throttle the guy. "Since when does 'look after Lisa' turn into 'let her go running off to Fairly Land on her own'?"

Lisa smacked him in the arm. Gwen smirked.

"What," she said. "You don't think a woman can do the job?"

Why did women always assume he thought that way? "No. But yoga instructors with no training?"

Lisa smacked him again, then folded her arms over her chest. "We've got a plan to get Ben back," she said. "So no closing any doors until I get my son on the right side of it, you got me?"

Sam stared back, his eyes hard. "You haven't seen what these things are doing over here. It's like after they got Dean, they decided to have a fairy free-for-all."

"Actually," Dean said. "We've been watching you guys all day. Or -- two days. Whatever." He rubbed his head. "Look, just. Hold out, okay? We're almost there."

"How close is almost?" And there was Sam's pragmatic side. He glanced down, and Dean realized he probably had the book open in his lap. When he was about to drive his baby. Jesus, that kid would be the death of Dean. Again. "There's some summoning spells in here, but we'd need a better grasp on the where and when on your end."

"Lola and Rita can probably help with that," Lisa said. "We can check with them at the meeting."

"Meeting?" Gwen asked.

"Long story," Dean said again. The last thing he wanted right now was to try to rehash everything that had happened here in Fairy Land. "Okay. We'll get the intel to you. When we do, I want you guys to gather up the parents of all the missing kids."

"Dean." Sam pursed his lips. "Some of those kids have been gone for weeks. I don't know what that translates to on your end, but in all that time -- they must have eaten something."

Right. The food thing. Of course Sam knew about the food thing. And he hadn't warned Dean. Not that Dean had given Sam, or anyone else, a chance to warn him about anything before he'd gone running off to get himself abducted.

In retrospect, that had maybe not been the best plan.

"I know," Dean said. He glanced over at Lisa, who was worrying her lower lip again, her whole body held stiff, then looked back at Sam. "I've been thinking about that. There's got to be a loophole, and I think I might've figured one out. Lola made a pretty big deal out of me 'laying claim' to Ben when I told her he was who I was here for. Human families may trump fairy food law."

Sam blinked, looking down again. "I haven't found anything on that. You could be wrong," he said.

"I'm right." Dean sounded more sure than he really was, but in everything they did, there was one thing he'd always tried to have faith in, and that was family. He looked over at Lisa. "If anything can get those kids home, it's their parents."

Lisa smiled a little stiffly at him, resting her hand on his arm. They heard the door open at the top of the stairs, and he looked back at Sam. "We've gotta go. Stick close to mirrors, okay? We'll contact you again as soon as we can."

"We will," Gwen said. Sam frowned, but nodded as well. Dean pressed his palm to the mirror to shut it off, just as Rita rounded the last corner of the stairs.

She raised an eyebrow at where Dean and Lisa were standing, one corner of her mouth turning up. "It's time," she said. "Come on and meet the Resistance."

*

Rita and Lola led them out through the town to a small shop situated just before the cobblestone street dead-ended into an enormous stand of trees. The fairies weren't much for signs, Dean had noticed, but the front window featured an array of soaps and buckets, with a washboard and a decorative clothesline. "Your resistance meets up in a laundromat?"

Rita gave him a sidelong look. "Would you look for one here?"

Well. He guessed she had a point. She pushed the door open and held it, letting Lola, Lisa, and Dean precede her into the shop. The front room was small, and unadorned save for the window display. A long counter lined the far wall, and behind it sat a bored looking, frumpy woman with red, scarred arms. She looked up as they entered, and Lola scurried right over.

"Heya, Benny," she said. She reached into her jeans pocket and started pulling out what Dean realized was his t-shirt. His theory about her pockets proved to be spot on, as she followed the t-shirt with his jeans, then his flannel. Of all the strange things he'd seen here, watching a tiny woman yank his clothing out of the front pocket of her skinny jeans might just take the cake. Benny held up each item disdainfully before folding it and setting it to one side.

"You're early," she said.

"We wanted to beat the rush," Lola answered. "How's tricks?"

Benny patted her completed pile of clothes and gave them a measuring eye, then pulled out a small metal token and handed it to Lola. "I'm thinking business is going to pick up," she said.

"You're always such a downer," said Lola. She waved a hand back at Lisa and Dean. "This is Hero, and the guy in the striped pants is --"

"I know who he is," Benny said. She looked Dean up and down disdainfully. "I've washed your clothes before."

Dean didn't know what she meant by that, but by her tone, he guessed it was nothing good.

"I'll have 'em ready by the meeting's end," she told him. "Fresh as a newborn colt."

"Uh." Dean took the token when Lola held it out, mostly just to have something to do. "Thanks?"

Benny nodded. She pushed some sort of button behind the counter, and a section of wall behind her swung open. "Davie!" she called. "Look sharp! We've got some live ones out here."

Rita circled the counter, making a beeline for the opening in the wall. "You've kept him off the cream, I hope?"

"Much as anyone could." Benny waved the rest of them back. "Go on, then. Get on with it."

Dean took the lead, as much to get a look at this Davie character as anything else. It hadn't escaped his notice just how many of the fairies around him were female. It'd be good to have another guy around, even if the guy did turn out to be a gnome or a goblin or something.

The wall opened up into a large warehouse space, far bigger than the outside of the building let on. Everywhere Dean looked, there were washtubs and water spouts. Some of them were running, filling the air with a sweet-smelling, cloying steam. The tubs came in a variety of sizes, made from all sorts of materials, but Dean didn't see anything more modern than a hand-cranked wringer.

The tubs were empty and unattended, save those that sat under the running water. Some of the fairies working were tall, like Bark-Face or Rita. Some were built more like Lola. Most of them were basically human-looking, though the man stomping around in the tub near the far wall had pale blue hair, the likes of which Dean had never seen before, from nature or a bottle, and the woman working the hand-crank was thinner than most runway models, without the odd, visible bone structure many of them ended up with. Some of the fairies weren't human looking at all. There was a creature hanging clothes up to dry to the left of the door that seemed to have exactly one of every part -- one leg, one arm, one giant eye in the middle of its face. Dean tried not to stare.

Lola and Rita circulated around the room, sticking close together as they exchanged pleasantries with each of the workers, clearly used to working as a team. Dean wondered how long they'd lived together as he and Lisa followed after -- they almost reminded him of him and Sam in the old days, they were so comfortable working in tandem.

Goddamn, but Dean missed the old days.

They reached an unattended metal tub. Rita sighed, giving a full head roll of exasperation. Lola kicked the tub. "Oy! Davie! Look alive!"

A tiny man no taller than the length of Dean's hand heaved himself up on the side of the tub. He was drenched, and unless Dean missed his guess, thoroughly sauced. "Beeree, my love!" He threw his arms wide and nearly fell back into the tub. "You found them!"

Lola picked him up between two fingers. "Yes, Davie. You were right."

Davie beamed. Dean guessed it wasn't something he heard all that often. "How's about a kiss, then? Reward for my good deed."

Lola lifted him to her lips and kissed his cheek daintily. Rita scowled.

"If you two are done? We do have business to attend to, here."

Davie wrapped both his hands over the tip of Lola's nose. "It's early yet," he declared. "It's not even nine-oh."

Rita shook her head, turning away and leaning in to Lisa. "I can't believe we elected him official time keeper. Just because he worked in a watch shop, on your side."

Dean looked over. "What, Brennan's? Old dude, shaky fingers?"

Rita shrugged, looking at Dean like he was insane. "Wherever it was, it went belly-up. Someone managed to work a door-closer on them, and Davie's whole crew was sacked. Something about drinking on the job, wasn't it, Davie?"

Davie slumped in Lola's grip, looking bedraggled. "Wasn't our fault. Sidhe never said we weren't supposed to work for cream."

Lisa glanced at Dean. "Brennan's?"

"First fairy sighting," he told her. "Maybe a month ago?"

"Damnable sidhe," Davie was saying. "Whoever heard of an elf doing work without getting any cream in return?"

Lola patted him on the head with the tip of one finger. "There, there," she said. "We'll get them."

"Right." Rita clapped her hands. "Let's get to it, then. Is everyone here?"

Dean turned, thinking that a handful of laundry-fairies wasn't going to be much of a rebelling army, and was surprised to see that while they were talking to Davie the number of people in the room had increased tenfold at least. Fairies were gathering together in little clumps, all talking low, their voices disappearing under the splashing of the water. He felt Lisa press a little closer against his side. He knew the feeling.

Rita clapped again and everyone turned to face her, staring openly at Dean and Lisa. At the back of the room, he spotted Benny, pulling the door to the front of the shop shut. She pulled a lever, and the water to the various tubs stopped. Some of the fairies looked back, and she regarded them darkly.

"Don't mind me," she said. "Just got a little washing to do."

A nervous murmur rushed through the crowd, and they turned back to face Rita.

"That's right," she called, her voice pitched perfectly to reach every corner of the enormous space. "The time has come, my friends. The sidhe have lorded their rule over us for too long, keeping us from our rightful places. Even Benny." She pronounced the name strangely, putting the emphasis on the "ny" and throwing in an extra "uh" on the end. "Denied passage to the human realm, she must do her washing here, in secret. And what good is a death omen if she remains unseen, unheard?"

Dean stiffened. Lisa's hand clenched around his arm.

"I knew it," she muttered. Lola shushed her.

"Who among you will stand beside us?" asked Rita, looking around as though to catch the eye of every fairy present. "Who among you has the courage to stand up to the sidhe, to demand what is rightfully ours for the taking?"

There were a few cheers of assent throughout the crowd, while the rest of the fairies fidgeted, or looked the other way. Dean was beginning to see why Rita was so keen on finding a rallying point for them all to get behind.

Rita pursed her lips, tapping her finger on her leg. She glanced sideways at Dean and Lisa. "Come on," she whispered. Lola gave them a light push, and when they stumbled forward, Rita grabbed them each by the arm, pulling them to either side of her. Lola overturned Davie's washtub with a loud clang, sending sudsy water out across the floor, and Rita smiled at her, stepping up onto it and pulling Dean and Lisa up with her.

"These humans stand with us," she said. "They've come to our world to take back what is theirs. A son, taken in the night by the sidhe's minions. They risked imprisonment, enslavement, even faced the Wild Hunt itself, all for the love of their boy. Is there any fae here who would not do the same?"

Another murmur through the crowd, and even more fidgeting. Dean noticed the fairies in the front looking down and away.

"They'll kill us!" someone shouted.

"Death is preferable," said another.

"Is it really so bad?" asked a third, setting off a loud rumble of angry voices as the fairies began to turn on each other.

Rita looked over at Dean and tilted her head toward the crowd. Dean shook his head, and she tilted hers more firmly, running her hand up his arm and over the back of his shoulder.

Her fingernails hit his neck and something sparked in the back of Dean's head. His body relaxed under her touch, and when he breathed in, the air was filled with that flowery musk he'd noticed when he'd first met her, overpowering the sharp tang of soapy water. He rubbed his hand over his chin and looked at Lisa, then took a breath and stepped forward.

"Uh, look." The words hung in the air, awkward above the suddenly silent and expectant crowd, and Dean cleared his throat. "I'm, uh. I'm not real big on the speech making. But, well. It seems like you guys all have kind of a thing for princes and heroes and things. Fairy tale stuff." Crap. They didn't like to be called fairies. "And I know -- I know it seems to you guys like those things don't really exist, any more." He shot another glance at Lola, who was watching him, her eyes wide. "Hell, most days, I'd agree with you. But these last couple of days, I've been seeing and hearing things that I would have sworn never existed. Couldn't be true. And I'm starting to wonder how much of that is what you make of it." He frowned, trying to keep track of his own train of thought. "Now, you all have started calling my friend here a hero, and, well, that's probably true. She's got no training in this shit. She showed up with a golf club and a bunch of teeny bopper stories, but she's made it this far. Saved my ass more than once. And, uh. There's a possibility I might be the prince these sidhe guys are up in arms about."

That got the crowd moving, the low rumble of their voices rising in a swell before falling away when Rita lifted her head. Her fingertips rubbed light circles over the nape of Dean's neck. "So, you know, you've got that going for you," he said. "A hero and a prince, both ready to take the sidhe on, themselves." And probably die trying, but, hey. Dean faced those odds on a daily basis. "Look, you guys have a seriously crappy deal here, okay? From what I hear, things used to be pretty sweet, and now you've got these sidhe guys all up in your business, trying to tell you what to do. And that's a load of crap." Another ripple, rising into another swell, this one sounding a bit more positive. It seemed to fairly wash through Dean, and he flashed the group a smile. "Seriously. Screw that. I mean, are you guys the fucking fae, or what?"

The swell of voices crested and broke over the crowd, turning into a roar. Someone pumped a fist in the air. Someone else started clapping. Dean's grin grew, and he lifted his own fists in return. "Fuck the sidhe! Fuck 'em!"

If there were any dissenters, they were drowned out by the chaotic cheers, which were slowly transforming into a chant of "fuck the sidhe". More fists lifted into the air. Dean looked over and saw both Lola and Lisa smiling at him, and he grinned back, almost feeling like laughing.

Then Rita's fingers dropped from the back of his neck, and the rush of energy fueling his crass little speech vanished, leaving him feeling light headed and drained. It was all he could do to keep from swaying as he stepped down off the washtub. Lola grabbed his arm once he was back on the ground, and Lisa followed him down, taking the other. They led him over to a nearby wall.

"Sorry," Lola whispered. "She gets carried away."

Dean's bad knee buckled, and he slid awkwardly down the wall until he sat, his legs stretched out in front of him, taking Lisa down with him. He stared back at Rita, still standing in front of the crowd on the wash bin. She had her hands up, calling for quiet again as she laid out the plan, something about a stockpile of weapons and maps of the castle and _we leave at daybreak_. She was especially radiant, now, her hair sparkling even in the low light of the warehouse, her scent wafting back even to where Dean was sitting.

Jesus. What the hell had he and Lisa gotten themselves into?

*

Lisa and Lola helped Dean into a small office off the side of the main warehouse, sitting him down on a threadbare armchair. Lola ran her hand over his head as he leaned back and tried to think through the whirligig sensation still spinning his head.

"Just relax," she said. "The first time's always the hardest."

"They're planning." Dean tried to get back up, but Lisa and Lola kept him pinned in the chair. "That's the part I can actually _do_."

"No, no." Lola kept stroking his hair. The light brush of her long nails over his scalp was helping, but Dean couldn't help but feel weird about the little glimpse of her motherly side. "You did good."

"Pretty good." Dean hadn't seen Rita come in -- she just seemed to suddenly be there, leaning against the desk. "I think we lost a few when he collapsed, but we have enough, now."

Dean did his best to glare at her. It wasn't easy when the room kept twirling behind her. "What did you do to me?"

Rita smiled. "I made you brilliant. It's only fair that I get something in return."

Lisa straightened from her crouch beside Dean. "You're a leanan sidhe."

"What?" Dean didn't understand most of that, but he caught the "sidhe" part. "You're one of them?"

"It's alright," Lola said. Dean twitched away from her hand, and she drew it back, looking guilty. "She's on our side. She lost Morcum, too."

Lisa's eyes went wide. "Oh."

Rita inclined her head. "The sidhe courts are fools. They called us back and sent children in our stead."

Dean pressed his hand to his head, as though he could push coherency back into his brain. "You were out in the world?"

Rita straightened her shoulders, folding her arms over her chest. "Your kind may have machines, but they will always need muses."

"That's sick," Lisa said. "You use people's imaginations and for what? For food?"

"'Sick.'" Rita sneered. "You know of Chaucer? Yeats? Shakespeare? What would become of humanity without inspiration?"

Dean let his head fall back over the back of the chair. "Reality TV."

Lisa smacked his arm. "I'm being serious," she said.

"So am I."

"How many of your stories have become formulaic?" Rita asked. "How many terrible retreads of once amazing works? My poets may be short-lived, but their legacy is eternal."

"Yeats lived into his eighties," Lola said.

"That wasn't my fault," said Rita. "They closed the gates before I could finish."

"That's why you needed us," Dean realized. "You needed someone to use, to prop up in front of your resistance like a puppet."

"Mixed metaphor aside, yes. And you did it so well." Rita smiled. Dean wondered how he'd missed the predatory gleam in the expression. "Perhaps you could be my type after all."

"Hey." Lola frowned at her.

"Touch me again," Dean said, "and I'll rip your arms off."

"Hey!" The frown turned on Dean.

"Touchy." Rita pushed off of the desk and walked to the door, hips swinging, her ass begging to be squeezed. Dean shook himself, and the moment passed. "Rest up," Rita told him. "They'll want to see their heroes again, before the night is over."

Dean groaned and rubbed his forehead. "Lola?"

The long fingers started running through his hair again. "Yes?"

"I hate you."

Lola sighed and took her hand away.

It took another twenty minutes before the room settled completely around Dean and he decided he'd "rested up" enough. His knee had gone from feeling stiff and achy to actively screaming at him any time it had to hold his weight, and he kind of felt like he was eighty years old (again), but he wasn't about to let that stop him from knowing what the hell the fairies had planned. He tried to tell himself he didn't actually care about their revolution, just whether or not he could work with it in getting Ben back. Mostly, he even believed himself.

Lisa stepped in front of him as he started to get up, blocking his way out of the chair. "You just almost had your life sucked out of you by a fairy vampire, Dean. I think you're gonna wanna sit a bit longer."

"Lisa." Dean looked up at her, both hands braced on the arms of the chair, ready to push himself up. "I love you. But if you don't move, I will kick your ass."

"Right." Lisa didn't sound the least bit convinced. Dean wondered if he looked as bad as all that, then remembered he was still wearing Morcum's old clothes and decided he probably did. Still, Lisa at least got out of the way, though she didn't go far, apparently believing that Dean could collapse at any moment. Dean made it to his feet, then leaned immediately against the nearest wall when his knee kicked up a protest. Lisa tried to take his arm, but he shrugged her off, and started limping determinedly toward the door back to the main warehouse. She could only put up with his bad moods for so long before she left him to his own devices. It'd always been true, but it seemed especially so now that they weren't a couple. She tapped Lola on the arm and tugged her out of the office. "Leave it," she said. "He'll make his own way."

Dean had never been so pleased to see the back of her. He didn't need an audience to watch him kick himself. This gig was supposed to be simple: get abducted, find Ben, and force the fairies to let them go. Maybe it wouldn't be _easy_ , but he'd only have the kid to look after. Now, thanks to Lola and Rita, he had a whole army of lesser fairies to worry about.

A revolution. He was to be responsible for a new fairy world order. As if knowing he'd inspired a heavenly revolt wasn't enough. He made his way slowly across the office, taking his time for more than the sake of his knee. He had to get his head in gear. Maybe Lola and Rita just thought he'd make a good figurehead, but he was more than that. If they wanted his help, they'd get it. He'd make sure they did this thing right.

The old woman from the front desk stopped him before he could get all the way out the door. She held out his clothes, now looking bright and fluffy, well-worn but soft, neatly folded, and stain-free.

He almost didn't recognize them.

"There you go, Winchester."

Dean blinked. "How --"

"Told you, I've done your clothes before. Took less time to do these than I thought. Not used to there being so little blood." She pressed the stack of clothes into his arms, then patted his shoulder. "Don't worry, I won't tell. That's why they come here. I do secrets as well as I do laundry."

Dean clutched the clothes to his chest, leaning against the door frame. 'Uh. Thanks. Benny, right?" She shrugged. Dean lowered his chin, looking at her suspiciously. "Do I owe you anything?"

"Free of charge," she said. "You and your brother are good customers."

Dean decided it was probably better if he didn't know what she meant by that. She gave him a light push back into the office.

"Get changed," she told him. "They won't be making the big decisions just yet. Besides." She gave him a once over and leered. "Those don't suit you at all."

Despite her reassurances, Dean changed as quickly as he could. Benny's place -- hell, this whole world -- gave him the creeps, and he was anxious to get on with things so he could hopefully get on his way home.

The crowd had thinned enough for Dean to decide that Rita had been downplaying the reaction to his sudden infirmity. There were now maybe fifty fairies filling the space, crowded in a circle around twinkling lights hovering by Rita's head. "We'll circle around here." She gestured, and the lights swirled into the lines of a detailed map. "Using Old Man's forest for cover until we get to the main gates. We've already got his permission, but don't count on the trees for anything more than that."

A murmur of agreement rose from the crowd. Dean suspected he wasn't the only one who thought the trees here were kind of assholes.

"We'll form a broad line here, along the edge of the forest." A span of lights lining one side of the mapped castle turned blue. "We'll wait for daybreak, when the night fae have come back to bed and the day ones are just getting up. That's the best chance for an attack."

Dean limped closer, and the fairies blocking his way stepped aside, forming a narrow path to the center. A few offered him words of condolence or encouragement as he went, though most kept silent. Davie took a flying leap from someone's head to land on Dean's shoulder.

"I get it, man," he said. "Even princes need a little help in the speech department."

Dean resisted the urge to flick the tiny man from his perch and made his way right up to the glowing map. Lola stepped up next to him and plucked Davie off his shoulder with two fingers, resettling him amongst the quills over her brow.

"That's Gregor's work," she said, her voice low so as to not interrupt Rita. She nodded to the map, then to the one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged thing Dean had spotted earlier. "He's a master of the glamour."

Dean leaned toward her, keeping his voice at the same low volume. "I thought glamours were meant to make you guys look pretty."

"He'd say he already is."

Dean supposed he couldn't argue with that. He looked around for Lisa, caught her eye, and nodded her over. "Where's the door we came out?" Lola pointed to a portion of the castle near the south end of the blue resistance line. "That's where we'll go in," Dean decided. "Think Gregor could lend us a glamour? Make us look like we're part of your lot?"

Lola nodded. "Easy. But it won't fool the sidhe for long."

"Every little bit helps."

Lisa bumped her shoulder against his, craning her neck to look at his back. "The tears are all stitched up," she noted. "It almost looks like they were never there."

Dean nodded. "Benny does good work, for a creepy old lady."

"Don't let her hear you say that."

"It's okay," Lola said. "She's proud of it. I asked her to do your clothes, too, Hero. They're probably ready."

Lisa nodded. "I'll get them on our way out."

"Now," Rita was saying. "Let's talk about weapons." She turned, and the fairies behind her opened up a path again, this time letting in a ten foot tall bruiser of a man, carrying several lumpy sacks almost as large as he was. Dean couldn't believe he hadn't noticed the guy before. Where the hell did a giant hide in an open warehouse?

The giant set down the sacks with an enormous crash. An assortment of swords, pikes, and maces fell out. Dean rubbed his hands together.

"Finally," he muttered. "Let's arm up."

*

Bobby came downstairs after he finished showering off the pixie dust he'd gotten coated in at the Christian Family Store -- the crap was worse than glitter, and he kept floating disconcertingly every time he thought of something pleasant -- to find Sam seated at the kitchen counter, the fairy spell book laid open in front of him, a notebook off to the side.

"There you are," Bobby said. "What took you two so long, you get stuck in traffic?"

Sam looked up from his notes, smirking slightly when he saw the towel Bobby had wrapped around his head. "Dean contacted us. We lost track of time."

"Dean?" Bobby hurried over to the counter. "How? What'd he say? Did he find the kids?"

"Slow down, there, Bobby. I'm gonna start to think you don't like me."

Bobby kind of didn't. Not this weird pod person version of Sam, anyway. "Don't be stupid. Spill."

"He and Lisa found some kind of magic mirror, lets them see into this world. Turns out it works both ways, as long as we're looking at a reflective surface."

Bobby smiled. "Well hell. I told you he'd find a way."

"Yeah." Sam didn't look too happy, but then, he never did, these days. "You were right. I guess having a soul really isn't a liability."

"What? Jesus, Sam, of course it isn't."

"Hey." Sam raised his hands. "I just . . . wasn't always sure. Anyway, Dean has a plan. He and Lisa are going to go after the kids soon, but they need us to work a spell on our end, open up a door so they can get over. I'm working on finding a good one, now."

If Bobby were still covered in pixie dust, he'd be on the ceiling. Dean was coming back. He wouldn't have to be the only one trying to rein Sam in, any more. And _Dean_ would be _back_.

He pulled out a stool and sat down, trying to get a look at Sam's notes. "What've you got?"

Sam passed the book over, tapping the page. "This one should work. Most of the components should be easy to get -- salt, primrose, ragwort and cowslips -- but we need some blood for a focus, Dean's or someone else's on that side, to make sure it opens in the right place."

Bobby frowned, rubbing his beard. "That's a tough one. It say it's gotta be fresh?"

"Doesn't specify."

"You boys bleed all the time. You must have something with his blood on it."

Sam tilted his head, then nodded. "I'll check his clothes. He didn't bring much with him."

"When are we looking to set up?"

"As soon as possible. Time is definitely screwy on his end, so there's no telling when they might be ready. I'm thinking we should do it in the park, since we know the barrier is thin, there. Rufus and Gwen can guard the circle in the garden, then close it when everyone's through."

"Sounds solid. A better plan than you boys usually cook up."

"There's one more thing." Sam tapped his list of supplies with his pen. "We need to get the parents of the kids to the park, too. Dean thinks they can lay claim on their sons, counteract the pull of the fairy food."

"Forgot about that. You sure it'll work?"

"No." Sam closed the spell book. "But it's the only idea we've got."

"Right." Bobby stood, pulling the towel off his head. "We'd best get started, then."

*

There wasn't much night left by the time the meeting broke up, but Lola promised they could get a few hours of sleep in before it was time to get moving. A pink-haired boy calling himself "Ruther" had offered his services for transport, apparently able to open a door in the air that would get them as far as Old Man's oak in a matter of moments. Any closer to the castle, he said, and they risked getting spotted.

Lola took Dean and Lisa back to her place, leaving Rita behind to finish up at the laundromat. "She doesn't need much sleep," she said. "You guys can take our room. If I need to, I can sleep on the couch." She looked askance at Dean. "There's one in the room, too, if one of you wants to take that."

Dean looked at Lisa and saw her glancing back.

"Thanks," Lisa said. "That'll be great."

The bedroom was on the small side, like most every room Dean had encountered here in Fairy Land. He wondered why space seemed to be at a premium -- it wasn't like there wasn't plenty of undeveloped land around to work with.

Dean paused in the doorway and rubbed the back of his head. "There's only one bed."

Lisa looked over. By the look on her face, she wasn't even remotely surprised. "Yes," she said. Dean must have looked fairly blank, because she went on, as if explaining something to a particularly slow child. "Rita lost Morcum too, remember?"

Lola had said that, hadn't she? "Okay, then." He filed that information away to process later.

The bed was large, big enough to accommodate even Sam comfortably alongside at least two other people. It took up almost the entire wall across from the door and was covered in assorted pillows. Bolts of fabric hung from the wall behind it, draping down to either side like a tent. The couch, on the other hand, was little more than a loveseat, beaten down and crammed into a corner. Dean sighed inwardly, thinking of what a pain it would be to sleep even a few hours on the thing. The floor would be preferable -- if there were more than a few feet of space between the pieces of furniture. He thought longingly of the Impala. His baby was no less cramped, but at least he knew exactly how to get comfortable when he had to sleep in her.

Lisa headed straight for the bed, already stripping off her borrowed tank top. Dean watched long enough to admire the curve of her back and note her purple bra before he remembered that he didn't get to see her like that, anymore.

"Right," he said, looking at the couch again. "Goodnight, then."

Lisa didn't answer and Dean glanced over to see that she'd stripped down to her panties and was rearranging the pillows on one side of the bed. "You might be more comfortable if you're not wearing your jeans," she said.

"Slept in them before," Dean pointed out. "It's not a big deal."

She smirked and patted the other side of the bed. "Come on," she said. "This thing's huge. And I promise not to cuddle you in your sleep."

Dean gave the bed a longing look. "Lisa, I -- that's not my place, any more."

"I think we can make an exception. Unless you really want to fold yourself up on that thing." She shrugged. "Or I could take the couch. I'd almost even fit on it."

He really, _really_ didn't want to try to take the couch. For one thing, he didn't think his knee would ever forgive him. That water dragon had managed to really do a number on it, and spending most of the day up and about hadn't done it any favors. On the other hand, there was no way in hell he was going to let her take it. He stood there in the tiny bit of space between the couch and the end of the bed. If Lisa thought she could handle sleeping next to him when they weren't actually dating, then he supposed he could, too. He finally relented and went over to help Lisa toss the decorative pillows aside.

They climbed into the bed in silence. Dean stretched out on his back and suppressed a moan. He'd nearly forgotten what a real bed felt like, and Rita and Lola's was heavenly. He couldn't even begin to guess what it might be made of, only that it wasn't like any bed he'd been in before. The wonders of having grown up in cheap motels, he supposed. Still, though he was exhausted and the mattress was practically cradling him, he knew he wouldn't be getting to sleep any time soon. Not with Lisa lying only a few feet away. It had taken him ages to get used to sleeping next to someone who wasn't Sam, and that feeling of oddness was back a hundred-fold, now. Things were too unsettled between them. He couldn't relax.

"I'm sorry I pushed Ben," he said at last, staring up at the folds of fabric draped above him. He felt Lisa shift, rolling onto her side.

"I know," she said. Dean turned his head to find her watching him, her lips pressed into a tight line, though her eyes were soft.

Dean swallowed and looked back up at the ceiling. "I shouldn't have come, that night. I thought I could control it." And he hadn't been able to handle the idea of dying without seeing her and Ben one more time.

"Control _what?_ " Lisa pushed up to one elbow, leaning over so she could look him in the face. "Dean, what the hell was that?"

Dean closed his eyes, not wanting to see her face when he told her, but not wanting to turn his back on her, either. "We were on a hunt," he said, and since that much was pretty much a given, he barreled on. "Vampires. One of them -- It was screwed up. One of them turned me."

Lisa didn't say anything to that, and Dean finally cracked one eye open, wondering if she'd managed to slip out of the bed without him noticing. She was still there, though, staring down at him, her mouth open, her brows pulled together. It wasn't hard to figure out what had her confused.

"I'm not a vampire," he said. "Turns out the Campbell family has a cure."

"For vampirism."

"Yeah, surprised the hell out of me, too." Dean sighed, turning his head toward her again. "I thought I was dead. If Sam wouldn't kill me, I was going to go out to find someone who would. But I -- I couldn't die without seeing you guys again."

Lisa stared at him for a moment longer, her eyes searching his face. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You were turned into a vicious, bloodthirsty monster, one evil enough that you were going to find someone to kill you, but first you had to come into my home and _watch me sleep?_ "

Dean winced, turning his head back toward the ceiling. "Yeah, well. Vampire. Get force fed a bit of their blood, and suddenly you've got their hearing, their thirst for blood, and their seriously douchey idea of romance."

He felt Lisa drop herself back down onto her back on the bed and wondered if he maybe overdid the flippancy. He looked back over at her, rolling over onto his side. Her hair splayed out over her pillow, and he resisted the urge to run his fingers through it.

"My life is screwed up," he said. "It always has been. You guys were so . . . normal. Peaceful. I wanted into that world. And instead, I dragged you both into mine. And I'm sorry for that. If I could do it again, I'd never bring that down on you two."

"I liked that, you know." She looked up at him. "I liked knowing that we could help you. I want Ben to be the kind of kid who doesn't just watch when people have problems. Just, you know, not by getting himself into the same trouble."

Dean winced. "He's a good kid. He did exactly what I would have done. He just doesn't have the training for it." He heaved a sigh and pressed his face into the pillow. "And now you're going into battle to try and save him from it."

"I'm his mom," Lisa said. "There's nothing else I _could_ do. It's not something you really understand until you've got a kid of your own." She searched his face, then nodded, seeming to have found what she was looking for. "But you do. You're about to do the same thing, even when you thought it was a terrible idea. You really care about him, don't you?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah. I do."

Lisa rolled onto her side to face him, reaching out one hand to run it down his cheek. "I really never thought that anything other than Sam could mean that much to you."

"Neither did I."

Lisa shifted forward on the bed, laying her hand flat against Dean's face and rubbing her thumb over his temple. "You were right, before. This -- it doesn't really change things. It doesn't make you safer for us. But." She took a deep breath, pulling her hand back to fold it up beneath her chin. "I just want you know. We do miss you."

Dean laughed once, a bitter, painful sound. How the hell had he ever stumbled onto a woman like Lisa, or a kid like Ben? It couldn't be karma. He wasn't that good of a person. "That doesn't really help much."

"I know." Lisa crossed the last of the distance between them, pressing her lips against his. As far as kisses went, it was one of the more chaste that Dean had ever had, in no small part because he was afraid to move, afraid to push it too far. Lisa broke it off, moving no more than an inch away. "It wasn't supposed to."

Dean's laugh came out clearer this time, though no less ironic. "You're a cruel woman, Hero."

"Mm." Lisa smiled. "You've finally learned my secret. I'm the cruel, nerdy, heroic mom." She started to roll away again, then paused, looking up at the ceiling. "I'm scared, Dean."

Dean swallowed, unable to pull his eyes off her face. "I know," he said. "I'd be more worried if you weren't."

She met his eyes. "Promise me we'll get him back."

He couldn't do any such thing. He was gambling with all of their lives, just like he had the first moment he'd shown back up on her doorstep, back before he'd even known Ben existed, and every moment since. They were going to die, and it was Dean's fault.

"I promise," he said.

"You're a fucking liar." She kissed him again, and this time, Dean let his mouth fall open under hers, losing himself in the sensation. Irresponsible, melancholy sex had been something of a staple for them, even in that first weekend so long ago. It seemed only natural when she moved on top of him, and he ran his hands up the length of her spine.

Tomorrow, they'd be back where they were, staring across each at each other over a canyon of bad ideas and wildly different lives. But tomorrow was tomorrow, and for now, they both needed to lose themselves, just a little.

  
**Chapter Five: Lay Your Claim**   


Dean crouched behind a bush, peering through the leaves toward the side entrance of the sidhe castle. Daybreak was, he'd been assured, only a few minutes away. On his right was Lisa, once again wearing her heavy cloak with the hood pulled up, her yoga bag strapped crosswise over her shoulder, her hands wrapped around a heavy quarter-staff. She'd been offered a sword or a crossbow but had turned them down, explaining that she felt more secure with a blunt weapon. She didn't want to accidentally chop someone's head off.

Dean himself had gone with a blade, a lightweight longsword much more suitable for his grip and reach than the tiny thing Lola had offered him the last time he'd been here. And sharpened, which was a definite bonus. The sword was strapped into a scabbard on his back, along the straps of which he'd managed to fashion a rudimentary bandolier to hold the extra shells for his shotgun, which he kept cradled in his hands. Lola had hissed when she saw the shells, and gave Dean a hard look.

"Stock in trade, honey," Dean told her. "No dormousing me."

"Just make sure you aim it the right way," she said, still scowling, before turning back to where Rita waited. Dean watched as Rita wrapped her arms around the younger woman, pulling her up into a firm kiss. He found himself trying to work out how they worked around Lola's quills and turned sharply away. That was not the sort of thing he needed to be thinking about just before going into battle.

To Dean's left was Gregor, empty handed -- Dean supposed he had to be, if he wanted to be of any use at all -- and beyond him stood the giant, whom Dean had dubbed Hans, doing a fantastic impression of a tree. The giant's older, much larger brother -- Franz, of course -- was some distance behind them, holding himself in reserve.

"You ready to glamour, Greg?" Dean asked. Gregor grinned, showing off his single tooth, and wiggled his fingers. "I'll take that as a 'yes'."

"Uh," said Lisa. "Wow." Dean turned, only to see another Gregor, this one with Lisa's hair and a single heavy breast. The thing held up the compact magic mirror Ruther had loaned them, and Dean saw a third Gregor staring back at him. He looked back up at Lisa.

"Not your best look," she said.

"Well," Dean answered. "At least we won't be recognized."

Gregor -- the real one -- gave them a thumb's up.

"Did you contact Sam?" Dean asked. Lisa nodded.

"They're in the park. Not all the parents have arrived, but Bobby says they'll be ready."

Dean looked up, noting that the sky had paled out to a deep, rosy pink to the east. "Just about time," he said.

A bank of clouds rolled up from the north at high speed, carrying with it the single, mournful howl of a large dog. Dean cursed.

"Guess the Hunt's coming home."

"We should wait," Lisa said. "Until they're inside."

Dean nodded, tightening his grip on his shotgun as he watched the ghostly riders touch down in the field that surrounded the castle. They had none of the manic energy that Dean remembered from Billy the Troll's bridge, and they milled around impatiently as they waited for the main portcullis to be raised. Dean tried to spot his parents amongst them, but they were too far away and gathered to tightly together to make out anyone distinctly. One of the dogs lifted its nose and sniffed the air. Dean tensed, but the wind was in their favor, and the dog turned its attention to another dog's ass.

The wind shifted, bringing a fog bank up through the trees, and Dean cursed again as it closed in around him.

"That's Franz," said Hans. Dean could just make him out as he puffed his chest proudly. "Our mother was a frost giant."

"Yeah, well, his timing sucks," Dean hissed, and sure enough, he heard the dogs of the Hunt begin to bark as the scent of Rita's army hit their noses. The Hunt's horses shifted, their hooves striking up sparks visible even through the dense fog, and one of the hunters sounded his horn.

It was answered by a piercing, ululating scream, the signal for the attack to begin. The foggy air was immediately filled with the battle cries of the fairy resistance.

The attack was on.

Dean grabbed Lisa's hand on pure instinct and broke through the bushes, running full out for the side door. His knee gave an angry twinge, but he ignored it, pushing his body forward through the lingering soreness and exhaustion that his rather gymnastic activities of the previous night had done little to abate.

An enormous dog leaped into his path, snarling. Dean blasted it full of iron shot without breaking his stride. The dog collapsed onto its side with a yowl, and Dean leaped over it, still pulling Lisa along behind him. His feet hit slick grass on the other side and he skidded, nearly going down. Lisa planted her quarter-staff and heaved on his arm, dragging him back to his feet and yanking him forward as she took the lead.

All around them, the screams of the fairies added a shrill note to the clash of swords and thuds of heavy weaponry against flesh. Dean heard Hans bellow, then felt the ground shake as the giant fell. Another agonized shout split the air, this one in a deep, thundering bass note, and the ground trembled again and again as Franz rushed to his younger brother's aid.

Dean could sympathize, but he didn't have time to dwell as a sword swung out, headed for Lisa's neck. He yanked her down, spilling himself to the ground as well as the sword slashed the air above them and the hunter who wielded it snarled in frustration. Dean rolled as the hunter's horse reared up, hooves flashing -- literally -- through the air, then he and Lisa took to their feet again, running full out. Dean cocked his shotgun one handed and fired backward, letting Lisa guide him as he watched the hunter dissolve into spectral mist.

He had no idea if they were still aimed at the door. The castle walls were formed from solid, pale stone, and they blended perfectly with the fog. He just had to hope that Lisa had kept better track of their direction than he did.

Another hunter rode up, and Dean yanked his hand from Lisa's as he hurriedly reloaded his gun. He looked up to aim, then froze.

Her long, silver hair had been shorn off brutally near the scalp, leaving her nearly bald, with rough, bloodied patches standing out above her ears. Dean couldn't help but think she was still one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. She turned away, aiming a wicked blow with her sword at a redcap who'd come out to join the fray, neatly severing his left arm, then swung her head around again as the redcap fell away. She smiled down at Dean, and he smiled back, his chest so full of doubt and longing that for a moment, he forgot the battle that surrounded them..

"Mom."

"Get on," she said. Dean opened his mouth to ask "get on where?" when he realized that her mount had lengthened, its back expanding until it was easily long enough to fit two extra riders. Dean took a flying leap toward the horse's back, latching onto the saddle with one hand and the tail with the other, nearly losing his shotgun in the process, and managed to pull himself up. Mary extended a hand to Lisa, and with the aid of her quarter-staff, she mounted in front of Dean. Mary shot a smile back at her. "It's nice to finally meet you," she said.

"Uh," said Lisa. "Likewise."

Mary spurred the horse into a trot, nimbly guiding it around the writhing form of the redcap she'd injured. Lisa lurched forward and grabbed onto Mary's back, while Dean held onto her shoulder, his legs squeezing tight against the horse's sides to keep from falling off. The horse picked up speed again, and with a jolt, Dean realized that they had taken to the air.

He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned into Lisa's back, trying not to think about it.

Mary took them higher and higher, calling back cheerfully as they went. "Your father's helping clear the way. The hunt master wasn't too pleased with us, but we managed to follow along at a distance. I knew we hadn't seen the last of you two, here. What you've come for is too important."

"You know?" Lisa asked, taking the whole "riding a flying horse" thing far too calmly.

"We've kept an eye on both our boys," Mary said. "John and I wouldn't have done any differently."

The horse aimed downward again, and Dean pressed himself harder into Lisa's back as his stomach rose in counterpoint. When the horse's hooves touched down with a clack against solid stone, he heaved in a breath, trying to regain his equilibrium, and his dignity. He opened his eyes.

The fog was gone, having not yet wormed its way into the castle courtyard where Mary had landed. They were in the far corner of the yard, between the outer wall and the circular keep, next to what looked like a little used storage shed. Dean looked around, letting go of Lisa to hold his shotgun ready, but though he could hear the sidhe forces gathering somewhere nearby, it seemed like the riders hadn't been spotted.

"This is as far as I go," Mary said. Dean jerked.

"What? Mom, no." Dammit, she was right _there_. "Come with us."

Mary looked back and shook her head. "If the horse goes any further in, it'll turn to dust, and I can't dismount, not yet. The entrance to the Children's Tower is just up ahead, but Oberon may have moved them to his main chambers during the attack."

"May have?" Lisa asked. Mary tilted her head, regarding them both.

"There's no precedence for this," she said. "You two have brought in something entirely new." She smiled. "You've caught them with their pants down."

Lisa nodded and, planting the end of her staff against the ground, slid sideways to dismount. Dean stared at his mother, not quite willing to see her go, yet.

"Mom," he said again. "How?"

Mary turned sideways in the saddle, reaching her hand back to rub it down Dean's cheek. She wasn't the ghost that Zachariah had tried to pass off as Mary Winchester. She wasn't the idealized memory of _Mom_ that Dean had created in the djinn's illusion. This was the grown version of the spitfire Dean had met in the past, furious and powerful even when the world seemed to be falling apart around them.

Whatever tried to steal her form, Dean realized, he would never be fooled again.

"Our family's never been good at staying in one place," Mary said, running her thumb over his cheekbone. "We got tired of Heaven, and John had seen enough of Hell. Not sure where we'll go next. I hear Valhalla's pretty interesting, now that Odin's gone."

Dean found himself grinning at her, even as he leaned into her hand. "Isn't it all drinking and fighting?" he asked. "Dad, at least, will fit right in."

Mary grinned back. "You say 'hi' to your brother for me," she said. "And don't worry. I know you'll find a way to get him back. We'll see you again. Sometime a long, _long_ time from now."

Dean leaned forward to kiss her cheek, then finally, reluctantly, dismounted. Mary took off again the moment his feet touched the ground, letting out her very best valkyrie scream. Dean watched her go, a proud smile on his face, then froze when he realized that the sounds of the sidhe army were getting closer.

"Shit. Bad idea, Mom." He turned to Lisa, who was watching him carefully. He took one last deep breath to refocus himself, then nodded. "Come on. We'll check the Children's Tower, then head for Oberon's throne room from there. You've still got the mirror?"

"Right here." Lisa patted her pocket under her cloak, and Dean realized the glamours Gregor had worked had already faded. He hoped that didn't mean something had happened to him. He was butt-ugly, but Dean had started to kind of like the guy.

He held out his hand for hers. "Let's go."

*

The Children's Tower was empty, though there were clear signs that the kids had been there not long before. The long dormitory at the top of the tower was cluttered with scattered clothes and scrawled notes and pictures, statements like "I want to go home" and long lines of hash marks freshly carved into the walls. Dean swallowed hard when he found one of Ben's t-shirts crumpled up in the corner. It wasn't the dungeon, but that didn't mean that these kids hadn't been locked away, hurt and scared. He could only imagine what must have gone through their heads when the sounds of battle started up outside the barred window.

"Oh god," Lisa whispered, running her fingers over the hash marks on the wall. "Dean, some of these kids were here for years."

"Yeah." Dean tugged her gently away from the wall, moving back toward the door, left open when the kids had all been taken out. "Just be glad Ben wasn't here that long."

"He might've been." Lisa pressed her lips together and hefted her staff. "Time isn't always shorter here. There are stories of people gone for ages when only days passed in our world."

Dean hadn't known that. He'd only heard about it working the other way around. He pulled the map Lola had made them of the interior of the castle from his pocket, taking a moment to plot out a path he thought would have the least number of sidhe along it. "Come on," he said. "The throne room's this way."

It was impossible to avoid going past any other rooms on their way to the center of the castle, but it seemed like all of the sidhe and their flunkies had gone out to join the Hunt in beating back Rita's army. There was no way to tell how the resistance was faring -- the fog had risen up to enclose even the windows along the towers. Only the continued sounds of battle let him know that they hadn't been wiped out entirely.

Fifty fairies. Against an entire castle full of trained soldiers and powerful monsters. Jesus, how the hell had he thought that Rita and Lola and all of the others stood a chance? The nay-sayers had been right, and Dean himself had talked them into joining the fight, anyway.

He tried to reassure himself that they were only fairies. It didn't work.

They had to double back and hide a few times as they drew closer to the throne room and small groups of sidhe, all dressed in fine silk and velvet robes, bustled along the hallways. They seemed almost excited by the battle, gossiping and placing bets about how long they thought the fighting would last. Not a one of them seemed at all concerned that the attackers had a chance at winning. Dean remembered Lola's earliest comments to him. "How medieval," she'd said. He wondered if the sidhe went in for bear-baiting, too.

Their luck ran out outside the throne room itself, which was guarded by a long line of armored fairies of all shapes and sizes. Dean thought he recognized the brownie he'd seen lounging outside the dungeons, standing straight and proud now with a morning star twice his size. Dean counted ten of them in total as he ducked down and peered around the corner, Lisa at his back, keeping watch in the other direction. Ten soldiers, versus one hunter with a sword and a shotgun and a yoga teacher holding a staff.

They were completely screwed.

"Well?" Lisa asked.

"We're completely screwed," Dean told her. "There's ten of them. Well armed."

Lisa leaned past him to take a look, then straightened back up. "Maybe I should have grabbed that crossbow, after all."

"Bit late for that now," Dean said. He cracked open his shotgun, double checking that it was loaded. "You ready?"

Lisa hefted her staff. "Not even a little."

Dean nodded. "Right then. On three." He looked back around the corner, braced the shotgun in both hands, and took a deep breath. "Three." He swung around the corner into the hallway, shot gun raised and ready. "Hey fuckers!" he shouted. When the guards turned to look, he let loose with both barrels, firing right at the biggest looking one in the middle. "Never bring a mace to a gun fight!"

A cloud of white burst over the guard Dean had shot, and he winced. He'd managed to load up with salt instead of iron. He tucked the shot gun away in the straps of his scabbard and reached for the hilt of his sword as Lisa came screaming around the corner behind him, quarter-staff held high.

It took them a second to realize the guards weren't attacking. Each and every one of them had dropped into a huddle around where the guard Dean had shot had been standing, picking at the floor and counting angrily.

"Right," Dean said. "The salt thing. I'd forgotten about that."

Lisa stared at him, her staff still raised.

"Good battle cry, though," he told her. "Very intimidating."

Lisa let out a hard breath, still staring at him, then started forward. "Let's go," she said. "They're going to have heard that inside."

"Right." Dean leaned his sword against the wall just long enough to reload the shot gun again -- using the salt rounds purposefully, this time -- then picked it back up, holding it ready in his right hand while he gripped the shotgun with his left. "Time to save the day."

Having lost the element of surprise, Dean decided to go with the most aggressive entrance he could. He kicked the double doors of the throne room open, managing not to wince at the pressure the action put on his bad knee, then strode in with Lisa at his side. He fired the shot gun into the air as he walked, making a beeline straight for the far end of the room, where the thrones themselves sat high on an opulent raised platform. Several of the sidhe -- all more dressed for a party than they were for a battle -- fell over each other in a scramble to count the grains, and Dean smirked. He was starting to wonder why he'd let himself be so intimidated by these guys. It was like being scared of the actors at a Renaissance fair.

"Alright, you sons of bitches," he said. "We're here to collect what's ours."

A man seated in the larger, sturdier looking throne rose smoothly to his feet, his head held high, a smirk of his own on his face. "Well," he said. "It looks as though our prodigal prince has returned. Oh." He tilted his head gracefully to one side. "And he brought a friend!"

Dean aimed the shotgun at him. "Lord Oberon, I presume."

The man nodded.

Dean had half expected Oberon to look like Hugo Weaving from the _Lord of the Rings_ movies, all pointed ears and thin little eyebrows and douchey hair. Oberon had the ears, certainly, and even the brows and the hair, but Hugo in his best days couldn't even dream of matching this guy in the pretty department. Oberon's features were exceedingly delicate, his cheekbones high and sharply defined under his pale, smooth skin. His eyes were the brightest green Dean had ever seen, and his stick-straight hair was a deep blue-black, falling in even lines down past his shoulders. He wore a simple gold circlet, patterned with ivy filigree, and a shimmering forest green robe, decorated about the collar with a line of opals. He spread his hands and smiled down the barrel of Dean's gun.

"Shall I take it that this foolishness outside is your doing?" he asked, then continued on without giving Dean a chance to answer. "Really, the house sprites are so easily misguided. It's a wonder they hadn't managed to get themselves killed sooner."

"Where are the kids?" Dean asked.

"Are you asking if we keep goats?"

Dean fired his shotgun at the wall over Oberon's shoulder. The fairy king didn't even flinch.

"Ah," he said. "The human children." He gestured to the side, and a line of kids came out from behind the throne platform, six in total, all holding hands and looking like they were seconds from shitting themselves. Dean didn't recognize a single one of them.

"You took seven," Lisa said.

"Yes," said Oberon. "But I'm afraid the Morrigan was feeling a little peckish."

"You son of a bitch." Dean strode forward, dropping the now empty shot gun to the floor as he hefted his sword. "Where is he? Where's Ben?"

"Now now, Dean Winchester." Oberon lifted his hand and Dean froze, sword still raised to strike. He could feel the fairy king's power wrapping around him, holding him in place.

This was why they didn't use real names around here, he realized. It was more than just convincing a pixie to tell the truth. Names had power, and Lord Oberon knew exactly how to use that power.

"Kneel," Oberon commanded, and Dean dropped to the floor.

"No." He could hear Lisa step back behind him, and hoped to God that Oberon hadn't had a chance to learn her name.

Oberon stepped down from the platform, his robes swishing softly as he moved. The kids all huddled tighter together, but the fairy king didn't even glance in their direction. His eyes were glued on Dean alone. "You see, Dean," he said. "You're mine. Your soul is worth more than any other my people have ever encountered." He circled around Dean as he spoke, reaching out his hand to rest it possessively on Dean's head. Dean tried to jerk away, but Oberon's fingers clenched in his hair, holding his head still. "A first born son -- those are always the best, so tender and filled with such high hopes and expectations. Heir to a dynasty --" Dean opened his mouth to protest, and Oberon let go of his hair to cuff him in the back of the head. "-- Not a strictly royal one, I know, but then, we were never much concerned with the strict rules your people put on yourselves. And best of all," Oberon leaned in and sniffed, his eyes rolling up in pleasure. "Prized by Heaven's angels themselves, yet still _untouched_. No angels or demons have wormed their way into your head, have they? Oh, sure, you're marked, all scorched and tattered from all those years in Hell, but that just adds flavor. Now." He stopped in front of Dean, bending down to look him levelly in the eye. "Did you really think we'd let you go, just because you fired your little gun around at us?"

"Oh, I don't know," Dean said, amping up his bravado to cover how hard he was struggling to break Oberon's invisible grip. "Seems like you haven't managed to hold onto me for long, yet."

Oberon smiled. "True. You're a wily one, I'll give you that. But you have your weaknesses, just like any other human. What was the boy's name? Ben?"

Dean struggled harder, managing to wrench his arm up and aim his sword at Oberon's neck. "What have you done to him?"

"I think I struck a nerve." Oberon stood back up, and as hard as he tried, Dean couldn't raise his sword any higher. "The boy is fine, Dean. Oh, a little terrified, perhaps, but you know how children are. I'll tell you what. I'll offer you a deal."

"No dice."

"Now don't be hasty. You don't have to decide until you've heard the terms." Oberon folded his hands. "I'll return Ben, right back to where I found him, if you stay with me, willingly, as my manservant."

"Alternate deal." Dean forced the sword a little bit higher. Oberon's grip wasn't permanent, he realized. It was slowly fading, the longer the fairy king went without saying Dean's full name. "You let Ben and all the other children go, and I won't rip your throat out."

Oberon laughed. "And again with the demands. Really, Dean, did you think that would work? You have no greater claim on the boy than I do."

"No," Lisa said. She'd been so quiet up until that point that Dean had almost forgotten she was there. She stood in front of the children now, gripping the tallest boy by the hand. "But I do." She lifted Dean's shotgun in her free hand, as the boy next to her raised her quarter-staff. "So back the fuck off."

Oberon took a step back, raising his hands. "I might have known," he said. "A mother can always tell." The air around the children shimmered, and one by one they changed shape. The boy who held Lisa's hand changed last, and Dean smiled when he recognized Ben's game face. It was the same look the kid had gotten when he kneed a bully in the crotch to get his video game back, and now it was aimed full force at the fairy king himself. Oberon looked distinctly unimpressed. "It's of no matter," he said. "They've all eaten. As has our prince here. None of them can leave."

Dean grinned up at him. "That's what you think, asshole."

Lisa fired the shotgun at Oberon's head, and Dean managed to dodge back, avoiding most of the spray. She'd loaded up with an iron round, and Dean had to admit, for someone who'd barely held a gun in her life, her aim was exquisite. The sidhe counting salt grains at the back of the room shouted denials as Oberon's head smashed open, spraying Dean liberally with bits of gore and skull. Dean flung himself back and raised his sword, daring the other sidhe to approach him while Lisa dug out the compact mirror. "Sam," she shouted. "Sam, do it now!"

"You fools," Oberon hissed from behind Dean. He spun back around, sword raised, to see the fairy king standing just where he had been, his head once more intact, though Dean could still feel the spray of his blood drying on his face. Oberon flung out his hand toward Lisa, and she shouted as the mirror exploded in her hands. "You think you can kill me? This is Underhill, that which the Irish called 'Tír na nÓg', land of eternal youth! We are the ageless, the eternal, and your mortal ways are naught but nuisance, the flies buzzing in our ears --"

Dean got tired of listening about halfway through the fairy king's speech, and holding his sword out straight, he charged straight at Oberon, running him through the middle and pushing him backwards, up onto the platform, and right back into his throne. The sword tip pierced the thick padding and the wood underneath, holding the fairy king pinned. He leaned into his face.

"You want me here for an eternity, huh?" Dean couldn't exactly twist the sword when it was wedged into the back of the throne, but he did manage to wiggle it a little, making Oberon's delicate face screw up into a wince. "Well, maybe I can show you the things I learned in Hell that give me such _flavor_."

A burst of light erupted behind Lisa, drawing shouts from the children. The light swirled and grew until it was taller than Lisa, and the center cleared, showing a cold blue winter sky over an expanse of open grass. Sam had done it. Despite Oberon breaking the mirror, Sam had pulled through. The children, still terrified, refused to go through at first, but between Lisa and Ben, they soon started herding them along. When the five of them had made it to the other side to be gathered up into the arms of their parents, Lisa turned back to look at Dean, her hand still clenched around Ben's.

Dean let go of the hilt of the sword and turned toward the gate. Oberon grabbed him by the wrist, stopping Dean in his tracks, though the grip was weak enough that Dean knew he could break it easily.

"Wait," Oberon said. "Your brother. His soul is lost, yes?" He took a deep breath, bloody spittle rising on his lips. Dean didn't believe for a moment that he was mortally wounded, but he had to admit, the fairy king had a hell of a flare for the dramatic. "Stay. Stay willingly, and we'll return it to him."

Dean stared at him, trying to decide if he was on the level. It wasn't as though Dean hadn't taken worse deals on the hopes of getting Sam back in one piece. He'd spent forty years in Hell so Sam could live, and he would have taken that or worse to get his brother out of Lucifer's cage.

"Dean," Ben called, and Dean shook himself. The portal was starting to close.

Wasn't that the lesson? The one he'd been trying to drill into Sam's head for the last few years, the one that he'd hoped he'd never have to teach Ben. Self-sacrifice always looked good on paper, but it just screwed them over more, in the end. Sam -- the real Sam -- would never forgive him for getting trapped in Fairy Land when there was still a chance at getting his soul back any other way. Neither would Bobby. Or his parents.

Or Lisa.

He wrenched his wrist from Oberon's grip. "Sorry," he said. He yanked the sword back out from Oberon's stomach and wiped it on the fairy king's robe. "Gotta go. That's my ride."

Lisa wrapped her arm over Ben's shoulders and tugged him forward through the portal as it rapidly shrank. Dean followed them at a dead run, using the sword to steady himself as his feet slipped on Oberon's blood. He dove through the portal when it was just a few feet wide, hitting the ground on the other side with his shoulder and throwing himself forward into a roll, careful to keep the sword out to the side so as not to accidentally impale himself. He stumbled to his feet just behind where Lisa and Ben now knelt, their arms wrapped tight around each other, and took a breath, marveling at the faint smell of diesel in the air. Six families clustered together near where Sam and Bobby stood. Several of the parents were crying, but Dean himself felt like laughing.

They did it. They made it. They were back.

Then something tugged hard on his stomach, yanking him back and off his feet. He dropped the sword and doubled over, feeling himself slide over the grass. It was as though a hook had embedded itself in his gut and was reeling him back toward the now tiny portal, determined to pull him back to the other side.

The pear. He hadn't managed to get it all out of his system, after all. He'd eaten the food of the fae, and now their world refused to let him go. He clutched at the grass, ripping it out at the roots as the fairy world continued to drag him backwards.

The children were all safe, tucked tight into the arms of their families, but no one had claimed Dean, yet. He needed his family and he needed it now.

"Sam!"

*

Convincing the parents to come to the park wasn't easy -- they understandably had trouble with the whole "your kids were abducted by fairies" thing -- but the promise of getting their sons back safe and sound trumped their skepticism. Bobby took point, holding his shotgun ready for any fairy interruptions. He hoped they wouldn't have to wait long. Lisa'd said they were just about to raid the sidhe's stronghold, but that still might make it a matter of hours, if not days, on this end.

Sam combined the ingredients in a handmade stoneware bowl he'd found in Lisa's kitchen. It wasn't solid stone like the ritual called for, but he seemed to think it would work, despite the clay and glaze. He'd found an old shirt of Dean's, stiff with dried blood, and Bobby had his fingers crossed that that would be enough. Sam recited the beginning of the ritual, stirring the components in the bowl with a silver knife to keep them active, one eye on the make-up mirror they'd picked up at the local Target, waiting for the signal.

The parents were getting restless, gathered together at one side of the field they'd picked for the ritual, talking amongst themselves. Bobby flashed them a reassuring smile, but he didn't think it helped.

They didn't have to wait too long. At the end of the second hour, the mirror flashed, and Lisa's voice came through. "Sam!" she shouted. "Sam, do it now!"

Sam recited the final words of the opening ritual and struck a match, throwing it into the bowl. The ingredients smoldered, but nothing else happened.

"Dammit," said Bobby. The parents started shifting about, sounding angry.

"It's the blood," said Sam. "It's not fresh enough."

Bobby'd been afraid of that. He'd spent all morning cooking up a plan B. "Use yours."

"What?" Sam looked up at him like he was going senile.

"You're brothers, Sam! If family's strong enough to overcome a fairy claim, it's damn well enough to find Dean in their world!"

Sam shook his head. "Bobby, that's --"

"It's damn well worth a shot, ain't it?"

Sam licked his lips and nodded, rolling up his sleeve to expose his forearm. He pressed the knife against it, opening up a shallow wound, then held it over the bowl to let his blood drip in, reciting the whole ritual again at high speed. He struck a new match and dropped it in the bowl. The ingredients lit up with a flash, and a portal swirled into existence in the air, rapidly growing to about ten feet tall. The parents gasped and hurried forward, calling out their sons' names as five kids came running through the portal. They skidded on the grass, crying out as the portal tried to drag them back, but the pull seemed to vanish the moment their parents got their hands on them.

"Well I'll be." Bobby tugged on the brim of his hat. "It worked."

Lisa and Ben came tumbling through a few minutes later, as the fire in the bowl started to burn low and the portal began to shrink. Bobby hissed through his teeth, sending a mental prayer to the only being he thought might be listening -- Castiel might not hear Bobby, but he was sure somewhere his wife would -- that Dean wouldn't be far behind.

The portal was almost too small for him, by the time Dean came through, covered in blood and dust and carrying a sword. The boy dropped into a roll, then came to his feet swaying. For a moment, the three of them were silhouetted in the portal's glow, Lisa clutching Ben on their knees on the ground, with Dean standing over them, the exhausted, loyal protector. Then the portal stopped shrinking and Dean doubled over with a cry of pain, falling to the grass and sliding backwards. He looked back toward the portal, then sought out his brother. "Sam!"

Goddamn son of a bitch. Of course Dean had taken food from the fairies, and of course he hadn't seen fit to warn them of the fact. Bobby looked to Sam, who was hurriedly reading off his banishing spell, not looking at Dean. "God dammit!"

Bobby dropped his gun and ran forward, diving past Lisa and Ben to grab Dean's arm like he was sliding into home base. Dean kept being dragged backward, and Bobby spat into the grass. "I claim him, dammit!" he shouted at the portal. "You hear me? He's _mine!_ "

But it wasn't enough. The portal kept pulling on Dean, now dragging Bobby along with him. A small hand wrapped around Dean's other wrist, and they both looked up, Dean's eyes wide. "Me too," whispered Ben, and he yanked back on Dean's arm. Dean's face screwed up like he was being torn in two.

"And me." Lisa grabbed the back of Dean's shirt. "You can't have him."

Dean stopped sliding, but his face stayed tight with pain, and the portal remained open. Bobby looked back toward Sam as his grip slipped. "Dammit Sam!"

Sam looked back, his eyes wide, but he stayed where he was, reciting the banishing spell over and over, his hands clenched around the book.

Then Gwen ran up, seemingly from nowhere. "I heard shouting," she said. "What -- shit." She ran over, squeezing in between Bobby and Ben, grabbing on to both of Dean's arms. "I'm _not_ losing any more family."

Between the four of them, they were apparently enough. The portal closed with an audible pop, and Dean thunked his head to the grass, breathing hard. Sam finished his final recitation of the banishing spell, and the park fell into silence.

Bobby pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around. "Everyone alright?" He looked down at Dean, who'd flopped over onto his back in the grass and stared at Sam.

Dean wasn't okay. He was alive, sure, and didn't look too bad off, physically, but he wouldn't be _okay_ until Sam got his soul back.

And Bobby didn't have a damn clue how that would happen.

*

It was six months before Dean saw another fairy. Driving past a random drainage lake in a random town on their umpteenth tour of the Midwest, Dean happened to look over while stopped at a light. They'd been driving around the country for so long now that Dean lost track of town names. Every place they visited looked familiar, every road half-remembered, like he always knew where it was, but never where it was going. He felt more than half-lost, these days, and had taken to looking around when he got the chance, trying to find the landmarks that would lead him somewhere like home.

Movement in the lake caught his eye and he tracked it, expecting to see a Canada goose gliding over the surface. Instead, he found himself staring down at a smooth, pale face. A woman poked her head out of the water, the dark mass of her hair floating around her, tangling in the stalks of the water reeds. She looked up, her eyes like two pits in her skull, head tilted toward the car as though she could see straight through the sun's reflection and right into his soul.

"Peg," he said, his voice low. She smiled like she knew he was watching, displaying rows of shark-like teeth.

"Dean?" Sam put his hand on Dean's shoulder, and Dean half-turned.

"Do you see --" He looked back, but Peg was gone, sunk back beneath the water or never there at all.

The light turned green and Dean drove on, trying to shake that smile from his mind, shake the certainty that he should dive into the lake after her.

Lisa called that night, a rare enough occurrence that Dean sat staring at the phone without answering until just before his voicemail picked up. Ben called regularly to update Dean on his life, tell him about school and girls and the video games he played. He asked every time if Dean would teach him to hunt, and Dean dodged the question by asking about Lisa, how she was doing, if she'd met anyone. He knew someday he'd give in, go back and teach Ben what he needed to know to survive, but he also knew Lisa wouldn't wait for him to decide to come home.

Lisa had only called twice, and each time, Dean's breath caught in his throat as he wondered if this call would be _that_ one, the one telling him Ben was gone again, this time somewhere that neither of them could follow.

It wasn't that call.

"Have you seen them?" she asked. Dean knew immediately what she meant. He thought he would have even if he hadn't spotted Peg.

"One," he said. "Hiding in a lake."

"Do you think this means it worked? Do you think the resistance won?"

Dean swallowed. He knew he should have wondered, should have been at least vaguely curious how the battle had gone after they'd beaten Oberon and got the stolen kids back, but there'd been too many other things to think about. Getting Sam's soul without destroying his mind. Fighting Eve and her monsters. Trying to help Cas with the war for Heaven. Lola and Rita and their revolution just wasn't as important. "I don't know," he said. "I hope so." He was surprised to realize that was the truth.

They talked awhile longer. Lisa was restless, just like Ben. They were living near Columbus, now, but she talked of moving west, to Seattle or Portland. She asked after Gwen, and Dean made up stories about the other hunter's exploits. Gwen and Lisa had bonded in the short time they'd known each other, and Dean wasn't brave enough to say that he'd shot the woman while possessed by Eve's brain-slug.

He could tell Lisa had something else on her mind, and found himself hoping she wouldn't ask it. Like always, he hoped in vain.

"Do you ever think about going back?"

Dean wanted to say "no", but he couldn't deny the pull he'd felt when he'd spotted Peg. "Lisa, you can't."

"I know." He heard her sigh softly, and pictured her running her fingers through her hair. "It's just -- I guess I finally understand. Why you could never stay. It gets into you, doesn't it? And you can't tell anyone, not really. They had to have been there."

Dean swallowed and looked over at Sam, who was on his laptop, pretending he wasn't listening. "Yeah."

"You can't go home again." She said it so quietly that Dean wondered if she knew she was even speaking out loud. She meant it for herself, he thought, but he couldn't help but feel it was directed at him.

Lisa and Ben were his home, as much as Sam was, had been even before he'd shown up on their doorstep to see them one more time before giving in to Michael. But he wasn't theirs, and he never would be.

"Yoga just seems so boring now," she joked, and Dean laughed, trying to make it sound like it didn't hurt.

"Tell Ben I said 'hi', okay?"

"I will. And you do the same, to Sam and everyone."

"Yeah."

And that was it. Neither of them really wanted to hang up, but neither did they want to keep talking. Dean didn't say "goodbye", but as he hit the button to end the call, he knew it probably was, anyway.

He saw the fairies everywhere after that, never en masse, but a single sprite or brownie, gliding over a wheat field or hanging laundry out to dry. He thought he saw Benny once hand washing a sweater in a laundromat sink, and he'd been on guard for a week, turning down every hunt they came across -- he'd looked her up in Bobby's books, and knew she was only meant to appear before someone died. Each time, he felt the same tug on his gut, like the long ago bites of pear were still pulling at his insides.

He never mentioned them to Sam. His brother seemed stable, these days, and he knew Sam probably knew about the fairies and everything that had happened intellectually, but Dean couldn't risk making him actually remember. Besides, he couldn't forget the way Sam had stayed back that day, had refused to help anchor Dean in the world, and Sam didn't need any more things to apologize for. This Sam would have done it. This Sam would have dropped the book, banishing or no, and claimed Dean as his own. And that was what mattered.

It was early June in Nebraska when they passed the sheep pasture. They were on their way to Oklahoma and a noisy poltergeist, but Dean made Sam pull over. Sheep were nowhere near as plentiful as cows in the States, and it had been ages since they'd last come across a flock.

"Dean," said Sam. "There's bound to be a gas station or something up ahead. Why --"

Dean cut him off with a wave of his hand, already halfway out the door. "This won't take long. There's something I have to try."

He climbed the fence separating the road from the pasture, careful to avoid the electrified wires strung low across it. The sheep greeted him with a quiet, confused chorus of bleats as he walked into their midst and turned counterclockwise in a slow circle.

"Lola?" he called. "Hey Lola, you here?" When he got no answer, he rolled his shoulders and tried one more time. "Brienne! Come on, there's sheep!"

Sam stepped out of the car and stared at him. "Dean?"

Dean flapped his hands at him as the sheep milled around. He hadn't really expected to find her, but he'd thought just maybe --

"Jeez, Groucho." He spun in place. Lola sat astride the largest sheep, her hands on its ears. Dean had to admit, the look on its face was pretty funny. "It's not nice to leave a girl hanging."

Dean smiled, relief flooding through him and making him sag. "You're alive."

"Please. Takes more than some uppity sidhe to get rid of me."

Sam walked up to the fence, his eyes wide. "What -- what --"

Lola waved, kicking her legs out to the side. "Hey. Grumpy, right?"

Sam stared some more, "what"s traded for silent gaping.

"Catching flies?" Lola asked.

"This is Lola," Dean said. "She's a pixie."

Sam turned his stare on Dean. "Okay," he said. He shook his head slowly, that "what the hell did I miss?" expression clear on his face.

"It's a long story," Dean said. "Maybe I'll tell you, someday." He turned back to Lola. "You guys won?"

"Sort of." Lola picked a few brambles from the sheep's wool. "The sidhe are still dicks, but we've made progress."

"Rita?"

"Running wild with the poets again." Lola's quills rose a few inches, the only outward sign that she missed her "roommate". "We don't see each other as much, but at least she's happy."

Dean swallowed, lowering his voice. "Morcum?"

Lola's quills pulled down low over her brow, and she shook her head.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Me too." She closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her grief away with some effort. "Hero's doing well. I look in on you guys, sometimes."

"Yeah," Dean said. It was his turn to fall silent. He hadn't spoken to Lisa since the night after he saw Peg.

"Dean," said Sam, incredulous. "You're making small talk with a _pixie_."

Lola snorted without ire. "Speciesist."

"That reminds me." Dean folded his arms over his chest. "If you're a pixie, then what are those little glowy naked chicks with wings?"

"New agers." Lola kicked the sheep, and it bleated petulantly. "Wannabes."

They talked awhile longer, Lola about the resistance members Dean had met and their negotiations with the sidhe, Dean about the ghosts he and Sam hunted and the monsters that hadn't gone into hiding when Eve went down. Sam watched it all, a half-baffled, half-amazed look on his face, until the sun started dropping toward the horizon and thunder rumbled in the distance.

"We should get going," he said. Dean nodded.

"It's good to see you," he told Lola, and he meant it. He didn't feel the same drag on his stomach with her as he did with the other fairies, though seeing her was bittersweet in its own way.

"You too," she said. "Well. Bye."

"See ya." Dean flicked her a wave, but she was already gone. Somehow, this farewell seemed much less final than it had with Lisa.

"Sam," he said as they drove south, the storm close on their tail. The air out the open windows was thick and humid. "Where do you want to go, when we die?" Sam frowned at the road, shooting him a glance, and Dean continued. "I mean, we will eventually. I still say sooner than later. Where do you want to end up?"

"You think we have a choice?"

Dean pictured their mom and dad, sitting proud atop ghostly horses. "I've got it on good authority that we do."

Sam blinked, tapping his fingers on the wheel as he thought it over. "I don't know. Not Heaven or Hell."

"Yeah," said Dean. He rummaged through his box of cassettes until he found the right Zeppelin album. He popped it in the tape deck and the crashing howl of "Immigrant Song" blasted from the speakers. "I'm thinking Valhalla."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You just want to bang a valkyrie."

Dean grinned, drumming the air, as the road spooled out in front of them into eternity.

  
  
**Notes and Credits**   


*Deep breath* Ahhhhhhhh. My favorite time of year! Big bang posting time! It gets harder to wait every year, I tell ya (especially when the week before you post LJ falls apart and you start to freak out that you won’t get to post it at _all_. . . .)

Anyway. So, first up, there’s some amazing people who must be acknowledged for, well, being amazing people right here. The mods of the [](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_j2_bigbang**](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/) challenge, of course, [](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/profile)[**thehighwaywoman**](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/) and [](http://wendy.livejournal.com/profile)[**wendy**](http://wendy.livejournal.com/) , who somehow manage to keep this sucker going every year and cheer me on despite the fact that what I suspect what I write is not really their favorite fic style. You both do amazing work, thank you so much!

There are also my amazing betas, [](http://maisfeeka.livejournal.com/profile)[**maisfeeka**](http://maisfeeka.livejournal.com/) , who pitched in a few “actually, the fae lore I know says this”es here and there along with her usual beta duties (what would I do without you, hon? Probably leave in a lot of homophones), and [](http://missyjack.livejournal.com/profile)[**missyjack**](http://missyjack.livejournal.com/) , who provided the more lay perspective on the fae and their ilk, and assured me that, yes, you could still read this even if you weren’t a little amateur Irish folklore nerd in middle school. And I absolutely could not forget to thank the incomparable [](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/profile)[**butterflykiki**](http://butterflykiki.livejournal.com/) , who doesn’t so much beta-read as, like, alpha-read as I go along, putting up with me doing things like pasting random paragraphs into the IM window to see what she thinks.

Okay, so. Once again, this was _not_ the fic I thought I was going to write for big bang this year. I’ve come to accept the fact that I will never end up turning in in May what I think I’m going to in January on this thing. This year, I had this whole epic journey arc of pre-series Dean striking out on his own to go after a mysterious monster -- but I’ve actually decided that I’m going to replace Dean in that fic with a pair young women in love and make it a young adult novel, so that’s okay.

But, really, I’m kind of amazed it took me this long in this fandom to really start in on the fairies. I’ve been a huge fan of fairy- and folklore since I was a tiny little girl stealing my dad’s fantasy reference books. My biggest struggle on this one, I think, was to limit my fairy world primarily to the traditions of the British Isles (the Wild Hunt gets a little Germanic, but there’s a fine tradition of them in England, too, dammit!). The lore and descriptions used in this fic are primarily inspired by the works of Brian Froud, whose fairy illustrations are haunting and gorgeous and just might invade your head if you look at them too long. His descriptions of Cornish pixies were just too much fun to pass up, and if I tried to branch out too far into too many different traditions, I’d have been writing this fic for the next twenty years. In my mind, if Dean had gone further afield Underhill, he’d have eventually crossed the border into Slavic fae territory and beyond, where the sidhe had less influence. . . .

But that’s another fic for another time, I’m sure.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed! And if you haven’t yet, please be sure to hop on over to let [](http://79chevyimpala.livejournal.com/profile)[**79chevyimpala**](http://79chevyimpala.livejournal.com/) what you think of the art!


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